Project Context
Meta's Facebook Reels team is preparing a 10-week launch of a redesigned creator onboarding flow in the Facebook app. Leadership believes the redesign could increase first-week creator activation, but the Product Manager, Design lead, Data Scientist, and Engineering lead disagree on what research is needed before launch and how much time the team can afford.
You are the User Experience Researcher assigned to the project. The working team includes 1 PM, 2 Product Designers, 1 Data Scientist, 6 Engineers, and you. The launch date is already tentatively committed in the half-year roadmap, so your challenge is not only to produce research, but to build trust quickly enough that your recommendations shape roadmap decisions, trade-offs, and launch readiness.
Key Stakeholders
- Product Manager wants a clear go/no-go recommendation by week 8 to protect the launch date.
- Design lead wants iterative feedback on 3 prototype directions in Figma before engineering locks scope.
- Data Scientist prefers to rely on historical funnel data and sees new qualitative work as slow and subjective.
- Engineering lead wants requirements frozen by week 5 to avoid rework in the Facebook app codebase.
Constraints
- Timeline: 10 weeks total, with engineering scope freeze at end of week 5
- Research budget: $18,000 for recruiting and incentives
- Recruiting target: 24 creators across the US, Brazil, and India
- Only 1 researcher is assigned; no additional headcount is available
- Localization support is available for only 6 moderated sessions
Complications
- A PM from Instagram Reels shares conflicting findings from a similar onboarding study completed 2 months ago.
- Engineering discovers in week 3 that one onboarding concept requires a backend dependency that cannot ship before the launch window.
- The Director of Product asks for a launch recommendation in week 7, one week earlier than planned.
Your Task
- Create a 10-week execution plan that builds trust with PM, Design, Data Science, and Engineering while keeping the launch on track.
- Define how you will align on decisions, trade-offs, and research scope before the week-5 freeze.
- Specify the deliverables you will provide to stakeholders at each major milestone.
- Identify the top risks to stakeholder trust and launch execution, and explain how you would mitigate them.
- Recommend how research should inform the final launch decision and any phased rollout or rollback plan.
