Puerto Rico’s government had invested in more than 50 small business incentives — yet uptake was low and impact unclear.
The core decision was not whether to create new programs, but where the system was breaking down: Were incentives poorly designed — or simply inaccessible to the businesses they were meant to serve?
As Code for America’s first partner territory, Puerto Rico presented both an opportunity and a challenge. Economic development was a high-stakes priority, but the problem space was vast.
Our team needed to identify a strategic pressure point where a small intervention could unlock disproportionate value.
I served as the UX Research Lead on a three-person interdisciplinary team.
My role was to guide discovery, frame the problem, and help the team distinguish between surface symptoms and systemic constraints — so we could focus on the right intervention.
Rather than starting with solutions, we focused on understanding how small business owners actually navigate government systems — and where progress breaks down.
Research emphasized firsthand observation and sensemaking across multiple perspectives within the economic development ecosystem.
We conducted interviews with small business owners, economic development officials, and intermediary organizations.
This revealed a critical insight: incentives were failing not because of lack of value, but because businesses could not discover, understand, or trust how to access them.
The problem was reframed from “increase incentive usage” to:
How might we help small businesses understand what incentives exist, which ones apply to them, and how to take action with confidence?
Research insights informed the design and launch of Primer Peso, a web application that guides businesses through incentives based on their specific context.
The project demonstrated that improving access and clarity — not creating new programs — could unlock existing public value.
It also showed how small, well-targeted digital interventions can reduce friction in complex government systems and improve equity of access.