Calling all the designers for Trust and Safety

Designing focused 100% on Trust and Safety is something quite new , and from what I’ve discovered until now, it looks like is not 'new' just for me, but something ‘new’ around the world. I mean, you can find people focused on building trust to boost safe transactions. And in a capitalist world, it does make some sense; after all, companies are pursuing profit (no judgments, just facts). But if you start analyzing from a business perspective, it’s not 100% true; since trust requires consistency (therefore, time), and to be ready to transact, you need the user feeling confident about your platform/product. Besides that, analyzing it from a user perspective, trust is even more important throughout the journey since the experience doesn’t start or become important just when you put your money on the table.

I started working at Marktplaats some weeks ago. For those who don’t know what Marktplaats is, it is the biggest marketplace in The Netherlands, being part of the biggest group of marketplaces worldwide. And I love that we are focusing now on such an exciting theme. I was wondering why would be so important Trust and Safety for marketplaces (mainly the ones where people, like you and me, could sell and buy their items). So I figured out that P2P marketplaces are a base for a shared economy that when people are at risk, they are not risking loose just goods or money, but in some way, people are losing their trust.

But what is trust?

Talking with some people, I felt that the word ‘trust’ sometimes sounds abstract, like air. So I started researching some definitions of it, and the one that I most liked comes from a Belgian psychotherapist called?Esther Perel that says:

“Trust is the active engagement with the unknown. Trust is risky. It’s vulnerable. It’s a leap of faith…”

So sounds correct saying that when we?risk peoples’ trust; we make them distrust themselves?(e.g., people exposed to frauds most time don’t report it to the police, feeling ashamed by being defrauded),?other people?(reducing the sense of community),?and your product.

And how to bring safety to this experience?

Feeling safe is one of the most basic needs of a human (based on Maslow’s pyramid), and enhance it by using UX is a significant and exciting challenge. The role of design in making people safe could be broad, but to simplify, I would like to sum up in 3 points:

• When designing forms, make sure that you are not asking for more info than you need to offer a great experience to your users;
• Discuss with your team about including technical measures (e.g., two-factor authentification) that could make users safer;
• Design the experience by being careful and honest when explaining to your users why you are implementing these safety measures in their journey.

Trust and safety are not ‘just’ about fraud.

One of the examples I gave above was about people being exposed to fraud; it is important to say that building trust and making people safe is not ‘just’ about preventing people from being defrauded. Fraud is for sure one of the biggest fears a user or a platform could face. Still, I want you to understand that?having a platform that inspires trust and invests time educating users?about safety; creates a community safe enough to auto-rule itself, reducing the number of people exposed to frauds.

How to create a product that inspires trust?

I felt that it would be important to place here the disclaimer that as someone designing a product, a ready-to-go recipe doesn’t exist to inspire trust in someone. But you can always try some basic steps, and if it doesn’t save your product, it could at least help a bit.

Be consistent

Imagine a product being like a person. As humans, our brain likes predictable situations. So by creating and following language standards (tone of voice), visual patterns (library or a design system), and clear user flows (as a user, I know the possible result of my action), it becomes easier to trust your platform.

Implementing the right security level

One of my favorite articles about trust and safety explains the different security levels. And when we start working with T&S, the first and more logical step is: LET’S IMPLEMENT ALL POSSIBLE FEATURES TO MAKE PEOPLE SAFE. So you start asking for 16 characters passwords, etc.

But the truth is that you can have people dropping your flow or creating shortcuts to avoid it by doing this. Besides that, high levels of security could make people feel unsafe. I’ll place below a quote from the article I told you, and it becomes more clear.

Neighborhoods with lots of steel bars on the windows and doors probably have them there for a good reason — and that tends to depress property values significantly.

Quote from:?A Tale of Three Doors — Security UX Design

So the important here is to find what measures are enough to reduce risks without scaring people even more.

And how might we educate users?

Being positive

Some researches show that we should NEVER approach users by using fear. It would make them feel frustrated in the long term and could enhance the chances of human mistakes. It doesn’t mean avoiding talking about problems, but make it from a positive perspective. I placed some examples below:

• Instead of saying?“Avoiding scam,”?you could try?“Being Safe”;
• Instead of saying?“Catching fraudsters,”?you could try?“Making the community safer”;
• Instead of saying?“Losing money,”?you could try?“Transacting safely.”

Being contextual

Creating an amazing FAQ is essential, and we’ll talk about it. But knowing when to give important tips to your user will make your voice more relevant. It is like receiving advice from a friend when you most need it.

Being there when they need you

Good friends would be there when you need them; it’s the same for your product. Creating accessible FAQs, bots, and support are ways to make people find helpful information and create that safe feeling.

Bonus tip

Stimulating rating and reviews

When I said about the community auto-rule itself, I meant that people would report bad users, highlight good ones, and create a sense of community by themselves. And rating and review systems have a powerful role in making it happens.

By enabling systems like this, you give voice to your users. So they can support each other, feel safer by having external opinions about a user, ad, or product (for marketplaces), and much more.

Calling all the designers

f you are a designer, making people feel safe and trusting themselves, each other, and the product/platform is your responsibility. And if you would like to talk more about it, reach me. I’m keen to know you and start a conversation.

Besides that, I’m curious. What are your thoughts about this article?

#ux #safety #people #trust #productdesign #design