Project Background

Meta's Facebook Reels team is preparing a Q3 launch of a new creator onboarding flow intended to help first-time creators publish their first Reel faster. Early product analytics in internal dogfooding show a 9% drop-off between account creation and first publish, but the PM, Design, and Data Science leads disagree on what research is needed before launch.

You are the User Experience Researcher embedded with a 10-person cross-functional pod: 1 PM, 1 Product Designer, 4 engineers, 1 Data Scientist, 1 Content Policy partner, 1 Marketing lead, and you. The team has 8 weeks before launch review, and leadership wants a clear recommendation on which research methods to run, in what order, and what evidence is sufficient to make a ship/no-ship decision.

Key Stakeholders

The PM wants fast directional input within 2 weeks to avoid delaying engineering scope lock. The Product Designer wants deeper generative work because they believe the problem is poor creator confidence, not UI friction. Data Science prefers an in-product experiment on Facebook because they trust behavioral data over self-report. Content Policy is concerned that onboarding changes could unintentionally increase low-quality or policy-violating uploads.

Constraints

You have a research budget of $45,000, no additional headcount, and access to only 2 Research Ops coordinators shared across three teams. You can recruit up to 24 external participants and use existing internal analytics dashboards, but any live test in Facebook Reels requires approval by Week 4. The team must finalize launch scope by the end of Week 6.

Complications

1. The PM has already told leadership that research will "validate" the current design direction.
2. Recruitment for new creators in Brazil and India is running 10 days behind plan, yet those are priority launch markets.
3. A parallel integrity initiative may change upload eligibility rules in Week 5, affecting your study design.

Your Task

1. Recommend the right mix of research methods for this product problem and justify the sequencing.
2. Build an 8-week execution plan with decision points, dependencies, and trade-offs.
3. Define what evidence is required for scope lock and launch readiness.
4. Identify the top risks to research quality, timing, and stakeholder alignment.
5. Explain how you would handle disagreement if stakeholders push for conflicting methods or timelines.