The Essential Nature of Trust in User Experience
Right off the bat, it’s easy to get UX wrong by only focusing on the surface elements of the prospective user’s experience. The obvious stuff, where the user is directly interacting with your platform. The trick here is that “user experience” doesn’t just entail the user’s time operating your platform — by the time they’ve gotten to that point, they’ve already formed a whole host of ideas, expectations and judgements that are going to affect their experience. That’s because UX isn’t something isolated, it’s a part of your brand as a whole. Not a subsection, not a lesser part; a facet of the brand experience, another way your user comes to think of your brand.
In short, user experience is a darn big category, extending well beyond a simple interface or product design. Everyone is a potential user and their experience starts long before they become an official “customer”. User experience starts with the brand itself. When a user sees your ads, hears about your brand, interacts with it in any way — their experience has already begun.
So why is this all so important?
Well, this is where trust comes in. Every aspect of the experience we’re talking about builds a sense of trust between the brand and the user. The kind of trust that informs their expectations of your brand — what it does and how it works. Most importantly, that your brand offers the security of following through on its promises. Because your platform and your user are united by a common purpose; the same goal, the same “why”.
Now, what does all this have to do with User Experience? Everything.
When you’re designing your UX, you’re banking on that trust and hoping to solidify it further. In order to do that, you have to ensure their user experience resonates with that shared purpose. Your platform’s reason to exist, it’s “why”, must align with a goal or objective of the user.
Maintaining that trust means every decision you make in your design, in your marketing, even your internal processes need to connect back to that purpose, the “why” of your product or service. Now your customer is not going to consciously notice all of these details. They’re not using your platform in order to analyze it, they just want it to help them achieve their goal. So while they won’t be writing dissertations on the nuances of your undoubtedly clever design, they’ll be happy because the platform aligns with their “why”. Almost like it anticipates their needs, which if you’ve followed this simple rule, it will. Because it shares their purpose, it has their trust.
Today, just remember this: The most important part of your user’s experience is establishing trust. You establish trust by helping the user fulfill the purpose they share with your platform. Everything else flows naturally from this.
Nice and simple.
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