Can you trust me?

24Apr09

A small excerpt from a fantastic article on the relationship between good user interface (site design) and the need for importance for businesses to make intentional, conscious decisions about the personality of their products and services. You have the ability to shape your customer’s loyalty…

Can you trust me on this?

According to a 2002 study, the “appeal of the overall visual design of a site, including layout, typography, font size, and color schemes,” is the number one factor we use to evaluate a website’s credibility.

This makes sense. Think about how our personal appearance (our personal aesthetic) affects how people perceive us; or how product packaging influences our perception of the product inside.

Below is a gas pump near my house. Contrast that with the station shown on the right.

 

Photo (right) by Sean Munson

 

I’ve stopped filling up at the gas station on the left, even though it’s closer to where I live. Why? This kind of maintenance (or lack of maintenance) leaves me unwilling to trust them with my credit card information. Clearly, appearance does affect trust.

So, how do we create trust in our application interfaces, aside from providing the basics, such as reliable information and uptime? By being attentive to visual design, for one thing. Attention to design details implies that the same care and attention has been spent on the other (less visible) parts of the product—which implies that this is a trustworthy product.

I’ve seen many great design comps get butchered during development. Things such as inconsistent fonts, odd padding, line-heights, and over-compressed images plagued the final release. While this may never come out during functional testing, how might these sloppy UI details affect perceptions of your product?

For complete article, click here. Conclusion of article below.

Stitching it all together

Recent studies into emotions are finding that we can’t actually separate cognition from affect. Separate studies in economics and in neuroscience are proving that:

“affect, which is inexplicably linked to attitudes, expectations and motivations, plays a significant role in the cognition of product interaction…the perception that affect and cognition are independent, separate information processing systems is flawed.” [2]

In other words, how we “think” cannot be separated from how we “feel.”

Illustration by Kevin Cornell

This raises some interesting questions—especially in the area of decision making. In short, our rational choices aren’t so rational. From studies on choice to first impressions, neuroscience is exploring how the brain works—and it’s kind of scary. We’re not nearly as in charge of our decisions as we’d like to believe.

Consider what you’re doing with your interfaces to speak to people’s emotions? Industrial product design, automobile manufacturing and other more mature industries get this—with tools such as Kano modeling that have been used for decades. But user interface development is still maturing and catching up to what these other disciplines already know: the most direct way to influence a decision or perception is through the emotions.

So, is “pretty design” important?

When we think about application design and development, how do you think of visual design? Is it a skin, that adds some value—a layer on top of the core functionality? Or is this beauty something more?

In the early 1900s, “form follows function” became the mantra of modern architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright changed this phrase to “form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union,” using nature as the best example of this integration.

The more we learn about people, and how our brains process information, the more we learn the truth of that phrase: form and function aren’t separate items. If we believe that style somehow exists independent of functionality, that we can treat aesthetics and function as two separate pieces, then we ignore the evidence that beauty is much more than decoration. Our brains can’t help but agree.

To consider:

1. What is your product or service personality? How do you get your customers to identify and want to do business with you?

2. What are the 3 things about your offering that inspire trust?

3. How does your personal appearance (personal aesthetic) affect how people perceive you?  What about your product packaging?

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Tags: a list apart, In Defense of Eye Candy, Stephen P. Anderson, ui, user interface, customer loyalty, good design, customer focus, customer focused design, visual design