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Strategy first, regulated or not.
Every engagement starts by understanding the business risk, the member confusion, and the organizational friction underneath the ask.
I sit at the intersection of design, data, and operations to make those moments clearer, calmer, and easier to fix. Independent practice, research-first, comfortable inside regulated and high-stakes work.
Four things I keep getting asked to do, stated plainly. The work tends to show up whether the industry is regulated or not: strategy, craft, authenticity, and the willingness to stay on a problem past the surface.
Every engagement starts by understanding the business risk, the member confusion, and the organizational friction underneath the ask.
Evidence-grounded, moderated well, and brought to life in rooms where decisions actually get made.
No playbook reskins. Each product, audience, and regulatory context gets its own system, voice, and pacing.
Output should leave the business measurably better and the customer measurably calmer. Anything less is decoration.
Both engagements at a national financial services provider. Highest-impact work typically starts well before the first screen: with the business risk, the customer confusion, and the organizational friction underneath.
A national financial services provider was out of compliance with the Zelle network and losing enrollment before the user ever saw a payment screen. I led the end-to-end redesign: clarifying the regulatory requirements, mapping the real enrollment journey, and rebuilding the flow so members and the institution were both protected.
Read the case study →Declines were the number one NPS detractor across 40M+ monthly transactions. The systems were messy, the rules were strict, and the humans on the other side were often stressed. I led service design, synthesized quant and qual, and briefed the journey to the bank president so the fix landed organizationally, not just visually.
Read the case study →A slower place for what the case studies can't hold. Reading recommendations, annotated thinking, and short pieces on design, research, and the operations work that makes both real.
Human Systems Studio is run by Ana Rosa Lerma. The studio exists because the highest-impact design work rarely starts with "how do we make this prettier?" It starts with understanding the business risk, the member confusion, and the organizational friction underneath.
Available for consulting, embedded leadership, and selective workshop engagements.
Read more about the studio →Best for project inquiries, scoping conversations, and workshop requests. I answer within two business days.
A low-pressure intro call. Bring the system you're stuck on; I'll bring questions.