Project Context

Meta's Reels team is preparing a Q3 redesign of the creation and sharing flow across Instagram and Facebook. Leadership wants a research recommendation in 6 weeks to decide whether to launch globally, run a limited rollout, or delay for additional iteration. You are the User Experience Researcher embedded with a cross-functional team of 11 people: 1 PM, 1 UXR, 1 content strategist, 1 data scientist, 5 engineers, 1 designer, and 1 UXR ops partner.

Key Stakeholders

The PM wants fast directional input to lock scope for engineering. The Design Director wants deeper insight into creator trust and usability issues before approving the final interaction model. The Data Science lead prefers methods that can connect to behavioral metrics in Meta's experimentation stack, while Legal and Privacy want tighter controls on any research involving teens and creator content.

Constraints

You have a research budget of $85,000, 6 calendar weeks before the launch readiness review, and access to only 2 major markets for live recruitment: the US and Brazil. Engineering can support at most 2 prototype builds and 1 in-product intercept. The redesign affects both new creators and frequent creators, but only 30% of the target audience has opted into research contact. The PM has asked for a recommendation that covers methodology choice, sequencing, and launch risk.

Complications

1. A senior leader has already suggested running only a large survey because it is "faster and more scalable."
2. The teen safety review may delay any study involving users ages 13-17 by up to 10 business days.
3. Early internal dogfooding shows conflicting signals: task completion improved, but confidence in posting dropped.

Deliverables

1. Propose a research plan that selects appropriate methodologies for the key questions and explains trade-offs.
2. Sequence the work across 6 weeks, including dependencies on prototype readiness, recruiting, and privacy review.
3. Define launch decision criteria and what evidence would be sufficient for a global launch vs. limited rollout.
4. Identify the top execution risks and how you would mitigate them.
5. Explain how you would communicate the plan to PM, Design, Data Science, and Legal when they disagree on speed vs. rigor.