I’m an experience design researcher, strategist and UX lead for products and services.

I specialize in complex environments like healthcare, enterprise, finance and
public sector.

How I can help

Understanding your audience

Using a toolbox of quantitative and qualitative methods, I can help you understand your customer’s background, mindset, and drivers that influence their connection to your product, service, or experience.

Bringing teams together around a goal

I collaborate with and lead multidisciplinary teams to bring results, provide clarity and efficiency, prioritize what’s important, and enable everyone to focus on what they do best.

Developing a holistic view of entire experiences

I design services and products with a systems thinking lens, end-to-end, grounded in the customer experience. You will see when and where pain points happen so you can identify opportunities with precision.

Evaluating ideas and experiences with customers

With quick, iterative testing, I can provide a clear plan around what to do next, what to fix first, and what to change to turn it into the best possible customer experience.

Making research an easy team habit

I systematize actionable, compliant, inclusive, AI-supported, trauma-informed research so it has an effective, ongoing, and lasting reach across the organization.

Designing concepts and prototyping

I will help you explore different versions of your product or service and see what works with customers before launching, quickly and cost-effectively.

Select case studies

  • Tax Filing Tool

    Giving taxpayers a free, easy tax filing option

    IRS DIRECT FILE

    Led a user research team around continuous testing, foundational research and research operations resulting in 96% positive reviews, 80+ NPS, and more than 1/3 reduction from the baseline in tax return rejections.

    “Direct File is a glimpse of a world where government tech benefits millions of Americans.” - The Atlantic

    View case study

  • Envisioning a modernized health care system

    INDIAN HEALTH SERVICE

    Qualitative research and service design to identify Health IT needs of the nation-wide health care system serving American Indian and Alaska Native communities. A Fast Company Innovation Awards finalist.

    "The personas and blueprints created allow decision makers to create a sense of empathy and urgency for addressing challenges that are faced across the country" — Maia Laing, HHS

    View case study

  • Medical Billing Rights

    CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES

    Here I conducted English and Spanish evaluative research, design, and prototyping with consumers to simplify content, information architecture, and forms for handling surprise medical bills with providers and insurance. I also workshopped an impact/effort/operations feature matrix framework to better shape the product roadmap.

    View case study

Project highlights

Medicaid and CHIP data collection centralized supporting compliance

Conducted research to design four data collection instruments using scalable, repeatable patterns to help states report back to CMS and ensure funding.

CMS

Mapping quality of care opportunities for sickle cell disease patients

In 2020, under the Health+ Sickle Cell Disease program, I led research to map personas and journey maps to help identify pain points and holistic opportunities for patients with this chronic condition.

COFORMA / U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

Future vision of services for
Nike flagship retail

Created customer journeys, service design, technology frameworks, and spatial concepts. Visit Nike House of Innovation

NIKE / R/GA

AI-forward discovery process to inform an EHR rollout

Conducted interviews with clinical and administrative staff and developed an EHR rollout roadmap for a community healthcare system across 21 programs.

LAKERAVEN

A new way to save money reached 35,000 Brazilian users

Conducted Portuguese/English research and conceptual design to inform the services for a new Brazilian savings and investment bank. Visit grao.com.br

GRÃO / METHOD

Retirement application made more accurate and faster with APIs

In 2020, I led a team of service designers to inform strategy and prioritization for the U.S. federal employee retirement process. Recommendations helped reduce processing time by 20%.

COFORMA / U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT

A Forrester award-winning credit card focused on financial health and education

Designed Barclarycard Ring’s client interfaces for this community-driven credit card.

BARCLAYCARD US / EMC CONSULTING

Enterprise AI adoption prioritization supported by data

Quantitative research with Coforma’s creative team to unearth fears, needs, goals and use cases.

COFORMA

Who I worked with

    • Coforma

    • Isobar

    • Method

    • RAPP

    • R/GA

    • SapientRazorfish

    • UXL

    • Bayer

    • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

    • Johnson & Johnson

    • Merck

    • Pfizer

    • Planned Parenthood

    • Walgreens

    • Tuple Health

    • U.S. Health and Human Services

    • Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

    • Immigration Policy Tracking Project

    • Indian Health Service

    • Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

    • National Science Foundation

    • New America

    • Planned Parenthood

    • Resilience Advocacy Project

    • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

    • U.S. Department of Homeland Security

    • U.S. Office of Personnel Management

    • Citibank

    • Barclays

    • E*Trade

    • Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

    • J.P. Morgan Chase

    • Morgan Stanley

    • Scottrade

    • Astrocenter

    • Chobani

    • Infor

    • LogicMonitor

    • Madison Square Garden

    • McKinsey & Co.

    • Mercedes Benz

    • Nike

    • Travel Channel

    • Verizon

    • Walmart

    • Weather Channel

Contact me

Talks and publications

  • Telling Complex User Stories: IHS Health IT Case Study

    How we designed service blueprints for the IHS to illustrate complex user stories.

    by Sabrina Fonseca and Arden Klemmer

    Read article @ Coforma blog

  • Understanding the Catalysts for Citizenship Application

    Barriers, opportunities around naturalization, based on research and testing with over 70 immigrants.

    by Sabrina Fonseca and Lindsey Wagner

    Read report @ New America

  • Designing forms for gender diversity and inclusion

    How do we ask people for their gender in a thoughtful and respectful way?

    by Sabrina Fonseca

    Read study @ uxdesign.cc

  • Designing Products for Everyone

    How to design products with various attitudes, abilities, and aptitudes in mind, from ideation to execution.

    by Arden Klemmer and Sabrina Fonseca

    Watch @ Design Driven NYC YouTube

Who I am

I'm Sabrina Fonseca, a Brazil-born, NYC-based UX research and service design lead. I've spent 15+ years in healthcare, government, and financial services, most recently leading research for IRS Direct File at Coforma. I worked as a photographer before moving into design and research.

Contact me

Hit me up if you have questions, requests, or just want to say hi!