How do you build products that users trust?

In today’s crowded market of products and services, trust is an important differentiator for a user choosing your product over and over again. To build products that are loved and trusted, it's important for product builders to have a pointed resolve to understand the user, solve for their pain points, and have their best interests at heart. My work in designing for trust has an impact on this - however, trust runs much deeper than the design of your product. It cannot be a paint job, it needs to be baked into the product.

It is the responsibility of the whole organization to ensure that each feature that is shipped has user trust at its core.

(I’ll do a follow-up article on my learnings from designing for trust.) Meanwhile, here are some things to think about right from the start of product building:

?????♀? Understand the user

Spend time understanding who the user is, and what are their needs. Ask the right questions, and don’t be afraid to dig deeper. Find a few key high-value scenarios. (Eg: for a home remodelling services app, find the top 3 services a user might need)

Find creative ways of reducing user friction in your product. Make the user’s life stress-free, smoother, and easier. Users recognize this instantly, and small wins go a long way in building their trust. (Eg: Grocery delivery platform - Integrating a wallet for instant checkouts. Not having the delivery-personnel call / ring the door-bell.)

This is often the most difficult thing for a product to get right, but it’s worth taking an iterative approach to this. Making user research and reducing user friction an ongoing part of the product development can help!

?? Prioritise quality of content or service

Identify the core offering of your product, and invest in quality. Content quality is the only thing that’s going to make users stick to the product. 

• For a social media site, this could mean the quality of posts
• For an e-commerce site, this can be the goods stocked, and the service 
• For an e-learning platform, it can be the breadth and quality of learning materials offered
• For a platform that helps parents find nannies, content would mean the quality of nannies on the platform)

?? Give users control

When users know what they want (and are particular about what it is), give them control to get it. This can be achieved with the design of the product. Make sure they have options to get specific about defining what they want, instead of suggesting that ‘this one is for you’.

If users are unsure about what they want, provide relevant options. Relevance can come from knowing the user deeply and can define trust. To get relevance right, give users a chance to let the platform know when something isn’t relevant.

• Google Photos has creative ways of filtering and searching for a particular photo - you can add places, people, dates, names of people or pets, etc. 
• YouTube is high on user engagement and trust, since it is very likely to recommend highly interesting personalized content.
• LinkedIn allows you to set criteria and tailor job recommendations, which helps with relevance.

Another aspect of giving users control is avoiding dark or manipulative patterns in design. Giving users the ultimate choice on what they want is a way of respecting the user. ‘Hinting’ at the right choice that is good for the company or business, is a way of undermining the user’s trust. Misdirecting users, tricking them into sharing more information, or buying things they didn’t explicitly set out to, are some examples. There is an entire website dedicated to dark patterns, which might be an interesting read!

?? Data and Privacy matter

In today's times, users are more aware and it's great to be transparent about data collection and usage. The three things users usually want to know are what data is being collected, how it's being used, and what benefit they get. Privacy concerns can be a dealbreaker for someone using the product. Use UI copy and find ways of celebrating and giving emphasis to information about privacy and data collection. To quote this amazing case study on trust, “balance your need for user information with your desire to use it to benefit your company.”

??Optimise the not-so-happy paths

When designing a product or service, it is good to pay attention to what could go wrong while using it. Spend time on the edge cases, find out how the feature could be used in unintended ways? Make sure users have a way of letting you know when something is not right. Having a good plan for damage control in place is a critical part of earning trust.

To conclude,

Trust is built steadily over time and can be broken in an instant. It can help in user retention and repeat usage of the product. Trust cannot be directly measured, but its effects are far-reaching - you'll know when someone recommends a product to you because it made their life easier, or helped them in an irreplaceable way. ?