Meta is preparing a redesign of the Instagram Reels creator onboarding flow in an effort to increase the number of first-time creators who successfully publish their first Reel. You are the lead designer working with a cross-functional team of 10 people: 1 product designer (you), 1 content strategist, 4 engineers, 1 product manager, 1 data scientist, 1 user researcher, and 1 QA lead. Leadership wants a launch-ready recommendation in 8 weeks because a broader creator growth initiative is scheduled for the next quarter.
The current flow has multiple steps: permission prompts, template selection, music selection, editing, privacy settings, and publish confirmation. Early usability reviews suggest users are dropping off before publish, but the PM wants to avoid delaying launch unless the design risk is material. The question is not just what is wrong in the flow, but what implies the biggest execution risk and how you would de-risk it before launch.
The Instagram Reels PM wants to ship in-quarter and prioritize measurable creator activation gains. The Engineering Manager wants to avoid late design changes that create rework in the final sprint. The Data Science lead wants enough instrumentation to isolate where users fail in the flow. The Legal/Privacy partner is focused on permission disclosures and does not want experimentation that weakens compliance language.