SWIPE JOURNALING PROGRESS DIARY - WEEK 2 - Trust!
4 min read
This last week I’ve been dredging through app reviews for journal applications to collect insights on likes or dislikes on the current market of journal apps.
I found one particular worry that users had across the board that really surprised me.
The security of their journal entries.
“However, I'm still reluctant to it's privacy and not 100% sold on the idea putting private thoughts in this journal, being in a virtual world where we live now.”
A dangerous Virtual world
Which makes loads of sense. A journal is a place for private thoughts/ideas/feelings, it’s your PRIVATE diary and we know we don’t read someone else’s diary.
We are told everyday day to watch out for scams, that our data is vulnerable and to keep your information safe.
We even hear of large scale personal information hacks of ‘trusted’ organisations. (The HSE data hack in Ireland comes to mind. I’m still getting scam calls on the daily)
A feeling of data invulnerability has become ever-present in recent years.
The question is how can you trust any app at all?
The user who left that review is right to be worried. It’s a dangerous virtual world and there are people out to get you, so how can you trust any app with your deepest secrets and feelings?
It would be easy to think that this is just one thing that pen and paper can do a lot better.
Designing for trust
To gather more on this topic of “Designing for Trust” I looked into a bunch of sources including, Joe Gebbia’s Ted talk on starting airbnb from 2016, Margot Bloomstein’s talk “Designing for Trust” from 2020 and a great article and conversation with Molly Clare Wilson and Eileen Wagner for Simply Secure called ‘I Read About "Design For Trust"; So You Don't Have To’
Bloomstein and Wilson both boil it all down to these three basic points on how you successfully build and design trust with users.
Legitimacy
Transparency & Honesty
Offer control
Legitimacy
This means looking professional, consistent and putting your best foot forward. Excellent advice for anyone but very important when building trust with app users.
However consistency is not as easy as it sounds and usually the smaller the workforce the harder it gets.
I know this from working with smaller companies and I know how hard it can be for someone to keep an eye on certain aspects of their website or online presence when they are hard at work keeping the other side of the ship from sinking.
But I’d also like to think of what professional means exactly.
What does it mean to look professional? I suppose not deviating too much from the norm is a sure fire way to look professional. But does this mean riskier designs could suffer as a result?
This is really just the start of thinking about building trust, we know that design and image isn’t everything, it is of course superficial.
But superficial counts, you don’t go on first dates wearing dirty pajamas.
Transparency & Honesty
This is the topic that wins a lot of people over and it’s exactly the kind of thing I crave from a company. It’s also the kind of thing that if I do see cracks or if there’s a break in that honesty you’ll lose me forever as a user/customer.
So I feel transparency and honesty is one of those things you have to have embedded in your ethos or design, if you’re truly going to be serious about building trust.
Offer control
This means giving users the reins when you can.
Give them options when it comes to their data or how they interact with your product.
This trust in them is returned in kind.
I like this goal especially because of the ripple effect I believe it causes.
It’s easy to think of the main flow of a standard user and designing for the large case but there’s a lot of disabilities out there where just lil tweek can improve someone's comfort hugely and that’s always something worth thinking about.
Also, when I think about apps and options and controls about security or data they are always squired away somewhere in options, they could be grayed down to be less obvious or written in some jargon that’s hard to understand.
It’s worth considering making them obvious, show that you understand their fears and put it on the forefront of the product.
Empathy pays off.
Conclusion and Jotty
So what does this mean for Jotty’s design of this simple journal app I’m thinking about.
Well I guess it means from the beginning explaining how the app works.
But not just telling them, teaching them too.
This could mean getting into some nitty gritty stuff and it could be hard to explain these things in an easy to understand manner. But I think that expense and time will be paid back with a user's trust and understanding.
Building trust also means giving them control over aspects of the app. Sure it might complicate design in some ways but creating a complicated customisable journal tool that still looks and feels simple and can be used by everyone is a worthy challenge.
All of this while creating a great looking, consistent design that attracts users that want to stay loyal.
Designing for Safety
