Trust is the currency for sustainable relationships. Without trust, it would be difficult to exchange value in almost any domain. We make choices on what to buy based on some sort of trust. We can afford to be vulnerable with our close friends in some aspect of our personal lives because we trust them. We prefer to use certain services over others based on built-up trust. We keep money in the bank because we trust that to a very large extent our money is safe. Let’s even bring it closer to home. The chair you might be sitting on - you trust that it is capable of holding your weight. The same applies to the shoes and clothes we wear and even the food we eat. It is easy to think that a lot of these choices are based on pure instincts and preferences alone, but there is always a subtle undertone of trust.

All of these also happen for things we do not trust. Of the hundreds or thousands of people we have met in our lives, there’s only a strikingly small number of them that we can really call our true friends. That’s because we haven’t been able to trade enough trust with everyone we’ve met in order to keep them as close friends. As a result, we make less contact with people we don’t know and stay away from 'friends' we don’t trust. You stick with things that have proven to be safe for you and it takes more energy to try out new things. We change providers once we begin to lose confidence in their services. We hear things like “I don’t trust this… ”, “I’m not sure of that… “ and these, eventually, become the foundation for the decisions we make.

This same principle applies to the apps and software products that we use. There are apps we stick with no matter how many times we change our phones. Over time, we’ve trusted these apps with our privacy, our money, our time; they seem to never disappoint. Even when minor issues occur on these apps, we can still tolerate them to a reasonable extent.

Trust is built. It needs to be nurtured. It starts small and grows into something without which products cannot be successful. Taking a cue from our everyday relationships with people, we can create products that gradually peel off layers of apprehension till users absolutely trust our solution.

How to get people to trust your product

There are simple ingredients that instill users trust in a product. Though they are very fundamental concepts in product design, they require as much attention as possible. These elements of trustworthy design are also quite interconnected - it would almost be impossible to excel at one and fail at the other.

Clarity - the quality of being clear, coherent and easily understood.

The way your app looks and works should be very clear if your users must trust it. They should be confident about the decisions that they make while using your app. This means that the information on different parts of your design must be well organized and comprehensible. At any given time, users should be able to know what a particular component is used for, and how to interact with it. As much as you can, try to reduce or eliminate the cognitive load on your app. Do not take orderliness for granted in your design - humans tend to appreciate order, and if something doesn’t sit right or work properly, users will notice.

Transparency - One sure way to earn users trust is by being transparent.

To be transparent means to allow access to information or facts. In design, a transparent product doesn’t withhold or hide information needed to make decisions. Clarity and transparency are quite distinct - while transparency provides visibility and information, clarity provides understanding and context to the available information. When these two are finely blended together, they create the perfect conditions for building trust. On the surface, clear and transparent designs have legible typography, distinctive call-to-actions, and perceivable forms and colours amongst other things. Internally, these designs are informative, accessible and always within reach.

Consistency - the quality of maintaining the same character at different times.

Consistency is a very powerful attribute when it comes to building and maintaining trust. In relationships, people want to be assured that in any given scenario you maintain the same standards that they’ve known you to have. They want to bank on it and hold you to it. On the other hand, inconsistency is a big turn off for successful relationships. In product design, we see consistency represented in many forms. From well-defined colour schemes to button systems to reusable components, your design should maintain its character throughout the product. In fact, using a design system is a true representation of consistency in action.
 It is important, however, to note that designing for consistency should not get in the way of usability. At every point in the creation process, designers should always ask: “Will the users’ previous experiences help them understand how to use what I’m designing?”

Familiarity - borrowed trust.

Some of the best interfaces are familiar to users. This means that users are more likely to interact with your product in a way that is similar to their experiences and interactions on other products they already know or use. If something works a certain way on a product that your users are already used to, they’d expect it to work in a similar fashion on your product. Because of this, familiarity reduces the amount of time that visitors spend trying to understand how your product works. So, you want to build familiar flows that adhere to established industry and market standards. Familiarity is also expressed in social proof. If your product is in some way used by or affiliated with a trusted brand, for example, some of that trust will be passed on to your product.

As advocates for users, designers can help product teams and businesses to craft trustworthy solutions from the get-go. Once users begin to trust your product, they become advocates and eventually influence the product’s growth and expansion. It’s important to not just earn the trust of your users but to also protect it, maintain it and build a mutual relationship with it.

Nnamdi Awili

Designer, Kora

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