Meta's Facebook Reels team is preparing to launch a new creator onboarding flow intended to improve first-week activation for new creators. You are the User Experience Researcher supporting a cross-functional squad of 11 people: 1 PM, 1 UXR, 1 data scientist, 1 content strategist, 1 designer, and 6 engineers. Leadership wants evidence-based decisions, but the product team is moving on a 6-week build cycle and expects research to directly inform launch choices.
The PM wants fast directional input within 10 days so engineering can lock scope. The design lead wants deeper generative research because the current flow may not address creator motivations. The engineering manager wants minimal churn after week 3 because the team is already committed to backend instrumentation work. The Reels growth lead cares about launch timing ahead of a seasonal creator campaign, while legal/privacy requires review of any new data collection or diary-study incentives.
You have a research budget of $18,000, access to 2 recruiting vendors, and only 1 research ops coordinator at 25% allocation. The launch date is fixed for 8 weeks from today, with design sign-off due in 12 days and experiment ramp planned in week 7. You can recruit from US English-speaking creators only for this cycle, with a maximum of 24 moderated sessions or 150 survey completes. Instrumentation for in-product intercepts will not be ready until week 4.