Designing For Trust
Michael Chanover
VP, Design, Khan Academy
While the domain of design continues to advance and evolve in amazing ways, the industry is still sorely lacking in its understanding of how to engender trust in both the solutions we put forth, and not-coincidentally, within the very teams where great design is expected to take place. In turn, trust can often be unfortunately scarce, on multiple levels. We all know this, it doesn’t take an expert to be overwhelmed with the enormous number of examples of trust being breached, and yet when we look toward possible solutions and answers to remedy this, the specifics of ‘how to design for trust’ is largely misunderstood within the design community. Poorly organized teams, and icons of padlocks intended to signify ‘safety’ are a far cry from the level of trust trust that is needed. A more holistic understanding of how to design for trust from the inside out has never been more important. Whether you’re a designer, design leader, a product manager, researcher, or otherwise interested product professional who wants to know how to infuse trust into both the products that you’re a part of creating, and the teams who are responsible for creating them, this short, high energy talk offers clear answers to the question “How exactly can I design for trust?”.
Michael Chanover is the Vice President of Design at the leading ed-tech platform, Khan Academy, where he oversees design’s role in providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Prior to joining Khan Academy, Michael served as the Vice President of Design & User Experience at NerdWallet, where he led a team of 40 professional designers, researchers and writers across product design, research and brand toward solutions that enabled consumers to make financial decisions with confidence. Michael also previously served as Vice President of Design at Shopkick, a mobile loyalty platform, Chief Creative Officer for Fingerprint, a gaming platform, and Vice President of Product for the Alsop-Louie portfolio company, Kidlandia. Michael was the Global Creative Director of Web & Brand at the educational toy company, LeapFrog Enterprises, where he led brand and user experience design. Michael spent four years in the San Francisco and New York offices of frogdesign, as Executive Producer and General Manager. Michael was the recipient of the UNESCO Design for Rehabilitation Award and has lectured, written, and taught on the subject of design. Michael holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an adjunct professor in the Interaction Design program at the California College of the Arts.
