Designing for Trust

The technology industry is on a quest to build frictionless, seemingly magical, experiences for our users. In the effort to design the simplest experiences possible, we exploit troves of personal data to make important choices for our users. Unfortunately, simplicity is often at odds with transparency. If we don’t tread carefully, we can obscure critical context from users, and our magical experiences can start to feel creepy. So how do we build trust directly into the UX of our products?

In this session, we will review some of the factors that engender trust, like reputation, transparency and consent. We’ll also explore some real world examples of products that do a great job of establishing trust, and some others that...miss the mark. We should walk out with a better understanding of the issues surrounding privacy and trust, as well as some practical tools for making our own apps and software products more trustworthy.

About Michael

Michael Boeke is a designer, product guy, and the co-founder of Synap. He focuses on applying a designer's approach and modern technology to shake-up traditional (boring) industries.  

Before Synap, Michael worked on products at online payments company Braintree (acquired by PayPal). Prior to that, he launched the first SaaS CRM platform for hedge funds at Backstop, and designed the CarePages social support platform for hospital patients (acquired Everyday Health).
Michael lives, works, and runs countless miles in the wonderful city of Chicago.