Designing for trust: how do you design products for people who have reasons not to trust them?

What are some practical ways designers can build trust with users?

So you have to be very literal with your communication. When you’re dealing with people’s money, you cannot afford ambiguity. If there is a transaction fee, tell them before they complete the transaction. If something fails, tell them immediately. If they’re seeing cached information because of poor network connectivity, tell them.

For example, we once had users funding their accounts through a virtual wallet. Our partner charged a transaction fee, but we hadn’t communicated that clearly enough. People started thinking we were taking money from them. We eventually displayed the exact fee directly where users were copying their bank details. Once they could see that the partner charged 0.25% per transaction, capped at ₦500, the complaints dropped.

Let’s talk about design and regulation. Is there a correlation?

There has to be a regulatory component. There’s no designer who can design their way out of it. If there’s no regulation backing you up, you’re a scam waiting to happen. Regulation gives you a trust vector. It means you’re traceable, you’re liable and you’re answerable to somebody.

You have to design for compliance. The people regulating you have their own design standards, disclosures and requirements. For example, in the UK, crypto companies are legally required to put a banner at the top of their designs stating that people can lose money. So no matter how pretty your design is, there’s a very ugly banner that has to sit at the top.

Then there’s the marketing part. When you have conversations with marketers and growth teams, they have an idea of how the design should look. They want to humanise the product. They might say, “If you don’t put a human being in the picture holding a phone, with all the graphs popping out, people won’t look at it twice.” But in the same vein, you don’t want the designs to look generic. You have to be very flexible because the people you’re communicating to have a language they understand.

How should a designer balance designing in a unique way with building trust?

You have to understand what makes Nigerians take the extra step for you. Your designs for marketing should not go overboard. Familiarity is your friend. There are things that are tried and tested. Just stick with them. You’re safer that way.

Nobody will stand in front of your billboard and try to decipher what you’re saying because you used incredibly abstract images. So familiarity is your friend. But familiarity does not mean you shouldn’t exercise judgement. You can include your brand details, your brand guidelines and what differentiates you. Think of familiarity as the larger concentric circle. Your brand still exists inside that circle.

I know most designers take pride in the fact that they want another designer to see their work and say, “This is one of the best I’ve seen.” But sometimes we need to come down from our high horse. The work we do in the market has to be literal. It has to be on the spot. They see it, they understand it.

How should a designer reduce uncertainty through their designs?

One of the things we get wrong as designers is that we design and test products screen by screen. People don’t use your platform screen by screen. They use it with a goal in mind. They want to send money. They want to fund an investment. They want to withdraw. So you have to design for someone who is trying to achieve a particular outcome.

If you’re dealing with esoteric terminology, especially on an investment-heavy platform, you need to put information icons beside text that could be confusing. If you show a term to two or three users and they don’t know what it means, put an information icon beside it. And make the interaction thoughtful. If you design a “Learn more” the whole text should be tappable. Don’t make the touch zone just the tiny icon.

Another way you reduce uncertainty is by anticipating the actions people will take. And you can’t do all of these things if you’re a sophisticated, tech-exposed person and you’re only testing with people like yourself. You need people who aren’t. Look for friends or family members who aren’t tech-inclined. Let them use the stuff you’ve been building.

One of the ways I also check how effectively UI designs work is at events. The faster someone can arrive at your booth, understand the product, get onboarded and leave, the easier it is to figure out whether your designer knows what they’re doing. I’ve seen situations where the same set of users were at a booth for three or four hours trying to get onboarded. After onboarding, the user would ask, “So, what do I do next?” That’s a big issue.

How do you balance sensitivity, clarity, and business goals when designing a product?

Designers need to be involved in the wider business conversation. I used to think designers could stay in their own lane, get the brief from the product manager and just design. But that’s not how products work. Your design is connected to growth, customer service, engineering, partnerships and the wider business.

Imagine a PM tells you, “This is the partner we’re working with, and these are their required fields.” You design around that. But because you weren’t aware of the wider conversation, after three weeks of intensive work, the PM tells you, “We’ve changed partners, and the new partner requires a completely different set of fields.” Now you have to undo everything. But if you had stayed in those meetings, you could have anticipated the problem.

In addition, you have to understand where thoughtful friction is necessary. We often talk about reducing friction, but not all friction is bad. I once watched someone use a money transfer product during user testing. She was tapping through the process almost automatically and eventually sent money to the wrong person. It made me realise we had removed too much friction. There should have been a confirmation step that forced her to stop and review.

What do designers often get wrong about trust?

We assume everybody appreciates good design for the sake of good design. No. People appreciate platforms that help them achieve their goals. I’ve seen financial products that look like marketplaces, yet people love them. People swear by them. I was in a market in Ibadan and told someone I wanted to send money to a particular bank. He immediately understood what I meant because the product was familiar to him.

That’s why trust cannot be treated as just a visual design problem. It cuts across regulation, product design, engineering, marketing, communication, usability and the entire customer experience.