Illustrations by Jeremy Sypniewski

Want to get in touch? I’m on Twitter @ mrrioki. Or email howdy@magicspoon.net.

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I’m pleased to bemoderating on a topic nearand dear to my heart as asystems designer at IDEO.

Hi. I’mLogan.

Everyone remembers...

The CEOat zimrideand lyft.

It’s a very personal space.We’ve learned a tontransitioning fromzimride to lyft.

Hey, speakingof transitions...

And we’retrying tomake thatpossible.

The carswith pinkmoustaches!

With zimride the questionwas how can you get twocomplete strangers toestablish trust online ANDget comfortable enoughto get in the car with eachother???

To start, let’s have thepanelists give a shortposition piece on trustand how it relates totheir work...Thanks for coming.

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With lyft there’s no timeto vet and get comfortable.

Everything that we’re doing tohelp users establish trust ishappening in the background.

I’m German.

We have to think a lot about trust.

We’re trying to convinceyou to have a magicalexperience by getting fooddelivered by a personyou’ve never met beforeand know very little about.

German, but nice.

I’m the CEOat Postmates.

Hi. I’mBastian.

In the app you’rejust seeing the tipof the iceberg.

You hear about“mullet apps”.

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We have to convinceyou to ignore this.

I work on the productdesign team at facebook.

Products are about people. Theywouldn’t exist if it weren’t forthe people who use them.

Trust is something thatgoes hand in hand withpeople and with humaninteractions. There’s noway to get around trust.

It’s a coreaspect ofthe space.

We try to get you toactually give somerandom person you met on the internetyour car.

Trust tookthree pieces:The PlatformBetween UsersScreening of BadActors

1.2.3.

In real time.Hi. I’mAvery.

Hi. I’mLuke.

I head upproduct atGetaround.

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CHAPTER ONE

Hi. I’m Andrew.

I’m the graphicdesign lead at Airbnb.

We have a brand that relieson a lot of trust—peopleopening their homes tostrangers.

How do we alsopreserve delight,learning, anddiscovery?

You know, I was thinkingabout cities. In a way theygrew faster than we wereable to handle.

We lost that feeling oftrusting our neighbors.

What was your mostsurprising revelationabout designing for trust?

I was inspired to startzimride when facebookcame out with itsplatform.

It’s about puttingan identity behindpeople.

How do we create trustin our users aroundhaving very consistentexperiences?

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The interesting thing isthat tech is no longerseparating us.

When Postmates started, thecustomer had the ability torate the postman (courier).

There’s a huge differencebetween the ratings thatyou give a courier and theratings you receive.

This diversity of ratings issomething we don’t fullyunderstand yet.

I’d really loveto know theorigin of thatperceptionof trust.

Sometimes the customer is happy—they got theirservice, but the driver feelslike they were treated like adriver or like a serviceperson.

We implementedthis feature andit’s been surprising.

There was no wayfor courier to ratethe customer.

This new ID/trustinformation layer helpsus connect and do thingswe never would havedone before.

On a more specificlevel—ratings.

It’s allowing us tocome together.

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In peer-to-peer (P2P)a big component isfeeling appreciated.

We get little to noinformation from the5 star rating system.

It doesn’t make sense. ...But maybeit does...

If I think about people I’mfriends/acquaintances with,and I think do I really trustthis person, I’d tend to sayyes.

Net promoter score is interesting. Yousubtract out all of the things in themiddle and look at things rated reallyhighly and really poorly and you figureout what the net score is.

But, maybe I haven’tbeen yet in a situationthat really tested thelimits of how much Itrust them.

How can everythinghave 4 stars?

We want to get moreunderstanding of WHYpeople leave badratings.

Knowing why allows us torespond and make the trustin our community and thepeople in our communitybetter as a whole.

1 star couldmean carsmells likesmoke orguy was 15minutes late.

facebook nearby.

Everythinghas 4 stars.

We haven’tsolved thisyet, but wewant to.

Ratings get thrownaround a lot as athing to build trust.

And I didn’trealize how meaninglessthey wereuntil a guywrote inand said:

“I’m giving every car I rent a 3 star rating—they’re notexceptional, they’re all just normal cars. I get insomeone’s car and it’s like my friend’s car. That’s anok, good, acceptable car. It’s 3 stars.”

Being treatedlike a human.

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CHAPTER TWO

Mutual reviews are importantfor gaining trust between ourusers.

Accurate reviews are reallyimportant to creating trustin the community.

Our most surprisingrevelation was aboutauthenticity.

One of our biggestdesign assets isphotography.What is a

place reallylike???

You don’tknow thatmuch aboutit.

We pushed ourphotographersto deliver notjust beautifulwork, but alsowork that wasreally accurate.

It’s pretty easy to establishtrustworthiness in personat a glance.

With the remoteness of theinternet you have to add inlots of layers—how do youadd the human back in?

You can do thisin milliseconds.

By doing this we’recreating really helpfultools that are based inaccuracy, NOT justbeauty.

How do wemake itauthentic?

Another thing is having the payment systemonline. This ensures meaningful experiencesAND trust between users offline.

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We show a really largeimage of the personthat does the delivery.

Getting a call right away todiscuss other options faroutweighed any dismay ofthe restaurant not havinginitial dish.

If we can’t solve somethingthen we love to put aprocess in place that helpswork around things.

Take the tech out!

Signals for trusting a human in person:

It meanta TON.

Then over timewe replace thatwith a product.

It’s hard to do,but actuallyvery, veryvaluable.

We have that 5 star ratingsystem. You see the numberof deliveries that person did. It’s important to show a levelof experience.

The same goes for thecourier. He sees thecustomer’s name, rating,the number of deliveries.

We show it crisp,we show it nice;it’s a very clean interface.

We’re tryingto play thisboth ways.

The biggest asset we haveat Postmates is the inventory.And we’re trying to understandthe inventory of a whole city.

When you order youexpect us to have theinventory right.

I ordered throughPostmates and therestaurant hadstopped serving theitem I ordered...And being

accuratebuilds trust.

A picture is veryimportant.

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Signals for trusting a human online:

Online, none of that exists. Wehave to resort to secondaryways of trusting people...

And what we found was thebest way to trust the personwas to meet them.

So we starteda key handoff.

...their facebooks, their socialnetworks, their platform engagement,their number of rentals/deliveries/etc.

You’d meet the guy, hand him your key,he’d say ok, and you’d say bring it back.

That’s actually a pretty coolexample where introducinga little bit of friction actuallyhelped the product.

Looking at how wehandle tough situationsthat come up...

There’s a hugeresponsibilitythere.

Our site integrityteam does a lot ofgreat work.

It’s work thatmatters.

At facebookscale 1% ofusers is stillA LOT ofpeople.

It felt a lot less like acompany and more justlike friends sharing cars.

Users were comfortabledoing the key swap becausethey knew the renter hadalready crossed OURthreshold of trust.

So then thedecision cameup to theowner.

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CHAPTER THREE

What happensif someone’sbeing bullied?

How do we be mindfulof the line between freespeech and safety andhumanity?

Taking the tech outwas true for us.

How portable is trustbetween platformsand engagements?

Splitting trust. Platformengagement is a metricfor inter-user trust.

We have all theseprocesses, but themost important thingfor our service is livingup to this idea that it’syour friend with a car.

We had NO techsolution to findnice friendly people.

I think that’s the only waywe’ve found to maintainthat high bar.

So we do anin personinterview.

We’re lucky to have peoplethat are entrepreneurial—they want to generateincome off our site.

We hold some responsibilityin helping them do a goodjob and helping them learn.

Helping them understandwhat actions they can taketo help improve their ownsuccess.

So there’s a role ofeducation there, too.

These are issues we’restill coming to termswith as a society...

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Because of collaborativeconsumption bad actorsare a bit of a worry.

Is there a way to bake in anopportunity for people tohave a second chance?

Ratings are intricate. Brand and context arounda rating are extremelyimportant and you risklosing that if you mergeit into a unified score.

These ratings are different.

There are ways to splicethe data to see what aparticular rating means.

The challenge with portabilityis similar to the problems witha 5 star rating system.

Everybody endsup with a 4.

So that peoplearen’t just badactors forever?

You don’t want themto find a least commondenominator to get inand get past the trustsystems.

People are taking theirreputations with them.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Maybe you need somethinglike a credit score?

For some things I wouldwant a very strict, precisenumerical rating system.

What types of fear factorsdo you face that you’retrying to solve and howdid you first detect them?

The literature says trustis built over lots of small,repeatable actions. Youmake an obligation andthen you uphold that.

Understanding thequestions and findinga way to address eachone.

There’s a checklist:Are they a safe driver?Are they a criminal? Are the vehicles safe?

We launched without additionalinsurance but questions keptcoming up. So we put together a million dollar per occurrenceinsurance plan to cover everydriver.

Like what NYC is doing withpublic health and restaurantratings is awesome.

It doesn’t mean you’regoing to love the food,but it means that it meets the safety threshold.

In terms of whether I’mgoing to love the food ornot I definitely don’twant a numerical score.

Most of us, again, probablyend up with 3.5 or 4 stars…

...somewherein the middle.

Maybe that’s howlife really is.Are you a good driver?

How do you rent outyour apartment?

There’s a lot of things.

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Initially, therewas no trustin the platform.

Research. Anticipatethe needs of users.Solve for them.

We want to actually giveas much information aspossible where peopleneed it.

As a society we try tofigure out what does itmean to have so muchcontent be digital?

And things that are digitalare going to be around fora long time.

They’re going to be indexed.

They’re going tobe searchable...

All messagingthreads on areon our site.

While you’re communicating,in that browser window you actually see that this personhas a verified phone number.

They’re connected to facebook.

They’re connected throughLinkedIn.

We had to lobby and fightto get a law passed thatendorsed peer-to-peercar sharing.

We had to build trust in usfirst, then in the platform,and then between users.

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CHAPTER FIVE

They’ll be aroundforever.

Any insights in terms ofhelping women have agood experience onthese sharing platforms?

We wanted to make itclear lyft was a servicethat was safe for women.

What better way to dothat, in addition to allthe background checks, than to havewomen driving?

Women will use it as apassenger, but can alsosee themselves as a driver.

Andrew mentioned pay-ments, and this is not anexciting example, but wehave a lot of feedback,especially from women.

Because you do not need any cash, the person thatdelivers your item, you know his face, you know his name,you see on a map when he arrives, and you don’t need topay him anything. That adds a level of security.

When things were moreanalog there was privacyvia obscurity.

Analog stuff ishard to find.

I don’t think wehave that figuredout.

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We wanted to make theproduct safe for everyone.

There’s no marginfor error here.

With our Neighborhoodsproduct accuracy wasparamount.

Women solo travelerswant to understand whata neighborhood’s like.

We highlight the accuracyof places so that peoplecan see up front whetherthey’d feel comfortablein that place.

When you’re doing aphysical transaction withtech it HAS to be safe.

We are now officiallyout of time.

Good job tothe panel.

Want to get in touch?

Thank you allfor coming out.

I’m on Twitter @ mrrioki. Oremail howdy@magicspoon.net.

It’s the iceberg effect again—yousee the product that is above thewater and you don’t see what’sgoing on behind the scenes.

We make sure the users are not bad actors.

Whether you’re a man or a womanwhen you go to this person’s houseyou know that the car will be there.

And you know that this person willbe friendly.But it’s important.