Sara Bayless da Costa

About Sara Bayless da Costa

Through service design, I help your business connect teams and systems together to deliver dependable, differentiated, end-to-end product experiences that drive business growth and customer affinity.

Experience

1. Senior Principal Service Designer

   Zillow

   Feb 2025 — Present

   Stepped in as interim Director of Design Strategy Oct 2025 - March 2026I lead the Service Design discipline at Zillow, with a focus on helping the Zillow Home Loans business deliver a dependable and differentiated customer experience that encourages homebuyers to choose us for financing their purchase. I use service design methods to visually map out customer needs, pain points, opportunities, and experience data across the end-to-end journey. Through journey management, I bring together Product, Design, Engineering, Sales, and Business Operations to make strategic, data-driven decisions on where to improve the B2C experience to retain customers and reduce cost-to-serve.

Education

• School of Visual Concepts

  User Experience Design

  2013

• Cornish College of the Arts

  Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)

  2008 — 2012

Skills

• Indesign
• Leadership
• Illustrator
• Concept Mapping
• Design Thinking
• Coaching & Mentoring
• Web Design
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Storyboarding
• Project Management
• Graphic Design
• User Research
• Design Research
• Mobile Design
• Axure Rp
• Creative Direction
• Persona Creation
• Qualitative Research
• Public Speaking
• After Effects
• Motion Graphics
• Photoshop
• Interaction Design
• User-Centered Design
• Illustration
• Visual Storytelling
• Affinity Diagramming
• Workshop Facilitation
• Service Design
• Art Direction
• User Interface Design
• Motion Design
• Animation
• Adobe Illustrator
• Sketch App
• User Experience
• Visual Communication
• Ethnography
• Retail
• Adobe Photoshop