Project Background
Meta's Instagram team is 8 weeks from a scheduled Q3 launch of a new creator onboarding flow intended to improve activation among 16–24 year olds. You are the lead User Experience Researcher embedded with a cross-functional squad of 11 people (1 PM, 1 UXR, 1 content strategist, 1 designer, 6 engineers, 1 data scientist). In the last 10 days, your rapid evaluative research on Instagram surfaced a strong signal that the proposed onboarding changes increase confusion around account privacy settings for teens and may unintentionally expose more profiles publicly.
Key Stakeholders
The PM wants to protect the roadmap because the launch is tied to a quarterly growth target. The Policy and Integrity teams are concerned about teen safety and reputational risk. Engineering says only limited changes are feasible before code freeze. The Research manager expects you to advocate for users with evidence, not opinion, and help the team make a practical decision.
Constraints
- Launch date is fixed for 8 weeks from today due to executive review commitments
- Code freeze is in 4 weeks
- Only 2 engineers can be reassigned without affecting other committed work
- Remaining discretionary research budget is $35,000
- You can recruit at most 24 additional teen participants across the US and UK before freeze
- Legal review for any teen-facing design change requires 7 business days
Complications
- The PM has already shared the current roadmap in a Q3 planning review with the VP of Product and does not want to reopen scope.
- The initial study sample was small but directional, so stakeholders disagree on whether the issue is severe enough to justify roadmap changes.
- A parallel Instagram Integrity initiative is competing for the same engineering capacity in the same 4-week window.
Your Task
- Propose how you would advocate for the user perspective while keeping the team moving toward launch.
- Build an execution plan for validating the risk, aligning stakeholders, and deciding whether to change scope, phase the launch, or proceed.
- Define decision criteria, launch readiness criteria, and a rollback/escalation path.
- Identify the top risks, trade-offs, and stakeholder management moves you would make.
- Specify what artifacts and recommendations you would deliver to leadership before code freeze.
