Workshop
How to Design for Trust
Michael Chanover
As the amount of information we are asked to share increases, and the effort by which we can share
this information decreases, the importance of designing trustful experiences is paramount in today's
digital world. Yet, creating this level of equity and honesty with our users can only take place
when we have a commensurate level of trust within our organizations, and within our own selves. This
hands-on workshop analyzes and addresses the specific ingredients of how to design for trust and how
we must enable trust as a design output.
Picture this: You’re walking down the street, and a total stranger comes up to you, asking if you’d like to save $20 off your monthly bills. “Excuse me?” you ask. This total stranger again says that you can save $20 off your monthly bills, and adds that all you need to do is share your name, phone number, home address, and social security number. What would you do? No doubt, you’d walk away and dismiss the person immediately. Yet, this seemingly bizarre interaction is analogous to a wide range of experiences that we all have with many of our mobile and web experiences on any given day.
We are constantly asked to share extremely personal information with companies of all shapes and sizes, from social networking to email to financial services and more. We voluntarily disclose our most personal information with web and mobile products just about every day of the year. Why? Because they’re convenient. And trust helps us feel good about these decisions–that we are not, in fact, dealing with some random stranger.
While we trust these companies to make our lives easier, it’s important to remember both how easily that trust can be broken and how once trust is broken it’s even harder to regain it. One only needs to look at examples where trust has been violated–Cambridge Analytica, Equifax, Wells Fargo, Uber, to name a few–to appreciate that trust, or lack thereof, can make or break a business.
Design is a key ingredient in building trust for users and designing for trust requires a careful articulation of how to define trust, how to designing trust, how to measure trust, and the lifecycle of trust as both part of a team’s ethos, and well as the work that it puts out.
Workshop tickets are sold separately from other conference events.
Outline
9:00 - 9:15 Arrive
9:15 - 9:30 Intros: my name is… “This is interesting to me because…”
9:30 - 9:45 Exercise: Warm up; finish the sentence “I know I can trust something or someone when…”
9:45 - 10:15 Lecture: designing for trust
10:15 - 10:30 Exercise: Form teams around a) defining trust, b) designing trust, c) measuring trust and d) the lifecycle of trust
10:30 - 11:00 Exercise: Ideate, brainstorm ideas around each topic
11:00 - 11:15 Exercise: Vote, pick an idea(s)
11:15 - 12:00 Exercise: Prototype idea(s)
12:00 - 12:45 Exercise: Groups share out
12:45 - 13:00 Wrap up, feedback on session
13:00 - 13:15 Clean up, debrief
Target audience
Designer and product leaders at all levels, and executives.
About the speaker
Michael Chanover
I am the Vice President of Design at Khan Academy where I direct all design and user experience for the world’s largest free online education platform. Prior to Khan Academy, I served as the Vice President of Design & User Experience at NerdWallet. Previous to NerdWallet, I served as Vice President of Design at Shopkick, a mobile loyalty platform, Chief Creative Officer for Fingerprint, a gaming platform, and Vice President of Product for the Alsop-Louie portfolio company, Kidlandia. I was the Global Creative Director of Web & Brand at the educational toy company, LeapFrog Enterprises, where he led brand and user experience design. I spent four years in the San Francisco and New York offices of frogdesign, as Executive Producer and General Manager.
I was the recipient of the UNESCO Design for Rehabilitation Award and I have lectured, written, and taught on the subject of strategic design. My articles have appeared in FastCo Design, Core77 and other publications. I am also an adjunct professor in the Interaction Design program at the California College of the Arts. I hold a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.