Ignore These At Your Peril: Ten principles for trust design

Online trust has been discussed for more than 10 years, yet little practical guidance has emerged that has proven to be applicable across contexts or useful in the long run. 'Trustworthy UI design guidelines' created in the late 90ies to address the then big question of online trust: how to get shoppers online, are now happily employed by people preparing phishing scams. In this paper we summarize, in practical terms, a conceptual framework for online trust we've established in 2005. Because of its abstract nature it is still useful as a lens through which to view the current big questions of the online trust debate - large focused on usable security and phishing attacks. We then deduct practical 10 rules for providing effective trust support to help practitioners and researchers of usable security

The mechanics of trust: a framework for research and design

With an increasing number of technologies supporting transactions over distance and replacing traditional forms of interaction, designing for trust in mediated interactions has become a key concern for researchers in human computer interaction (HCI). While much of this research focuses on increasing users’ trust, we present a framework that shifts the perspective towards factors that support trustworthy behavior. In a second step, we analyze how the presence of these factors can be signalled. We argue that it is essential to take a systemic perspective for enabling well-placed trust and trustworthy behavior in the long term. For our analysis we draw on relevant research from sociology, economics, and psychology, as well as HCI. We identify contextual properties (motivation based on temporal, social, and institutional embeddedness) and the actor's intrinsic properties (ability, and motivation based on internalized norms and benevolence) that form the basis of trustworthy behavior. Our analysis provides a frame of reference for the design of studies on trust in technology-mediated interactions, as well as a guide for identifying trust requirements in design processes. We demonstrate the application of the framework in three scenarios: call centre interactions, B2C e-commerce, and voice-enabled on-line gaming

Trust in mediated interactions

Modern technologies are increasingly enabling interactions between people who have never met face-to-face. In some cases, such as e-commerce, user-system interactions even replace human interactions. With the introduction of such systems came a widely publicised lack of trust online. In response, many researchers have focused on how to increase users' trust perceptions. Taking a systemic perspective, this thesis posits that long-term acceptance may largely depend on users' ability to make correct trust decisions rather than on high trust in the short term. Further shortcomings of HCI trust research were identified in a critical literature review: current trust research (1) is mostly based on users' self-reports, (2) lacks a coherent conceptual basis, and (3) focuses on cognitive trust, even though it is well established that trust is also based on affective reactions to interpersonal cues. To overcome these limitations, this thesis makes theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions. It (i) introduces an integrated framework for trust in mediated interactions that unifies existing HCI trust research, (ii) explores novel behavioural trust measures, and (iii) reports a series of experiments on users' ability to make correct trust decisions and on the effect of mediated interpersonal cues on trust and usability. The experiments on trust in e-commerce found that users could differentiate trustworthy from less trustworthy vendors, but only after a detailed exploration of a site. Judgements based on an inspection of the home page alone were not better than chance. Facial photos of assistants (which are commonly used by online vendors, but rarely researched) were found to affect users' self-reported trust in a vendor only when just the home page was inspected. No lasting negative effect of photos was found on task performance. For user trust in a human advisor interpersonal cues were researched in the form of video, avatar, audio, and photo representations. It was found that video could interfere with users' preference for trustworthy advice. An increase in risk led to an increase in interference. The avatar did not result in an increase in trust relative to other representations; rather there was some evidence for a marginally negative effect of this representation on trust. All representations that contained visual or para-verbal interpersonal cues (including the avatar) were rated as being more friendly and enjoyable than text-only representations

SUGGESTING LOCAL ACTIVITIES BY INFERRED CONTEXT

A system for suggesting local activities based on inferred user and location attributes (e.g. familiarity with an area, time of day, day of week), as well as explicitly stated attributes (e.g. group size + composition, such as alone, couple, with friends, with kids) is presented. The system is based on an ontology of activities including highlevel intents, moods etc. afforded by a particular locality. These activities are then mapped to contextual factors by expert editors who assign a value to each activity and contextual factor intersection, indicating the degree to which an activity is suited for a particular context. The system then suggests activities based on the inferred and explicit userstated contextual factors using the mapping. Advantages of the system include generation of expert suggestions or recommendations that are similar to what people provide one another, which encourages discovery by highlighting locally typical activities

Depending on the Kindness of Strangers? Trust Relationships in Ambient Societies

The vision of the ambient society relies on the constant exchange of personal information among multiple devices, individuals and organisations. The high number of microtrust decisions required in such a scenario calls for automated trust management. In this paper we discuss a set of contextual properties of transactions that ensure trust and trustworthy action in everyday situation and suggest how they can be incorporated in trust management for ambient technologies. We identify institutions, repeated interactions and reputation as contextual properties that support cooperation. We then discuss the limitations and risks of assuring cooperation based on contextual properties alone. Firstly, a subjective assessment of personal properties (e.g.benevolence and integrity) also forms an important basis for trust in others. Furthermore trust based on contextual properties is hard to establish in the case of vague outcomes, and multi-dimensional risks. Finally, establishing one’s own trustworthiness requires giving access to personal information. Ambient technologies must also allow individuals to remain untrusted but private

Face it: Photos don't make a web site trustworthy

Use of staff photographs is frequently advocated as a means of increasing customer confidence in an e-shop. However, these claims are not conceptually or empirically grounded. In this paper we describe a qualitative study, which elicited customer reactions towards an e-commerce site that displayed staff photographs and links to richer media. The results suggest that employing social and affective cues, particularly in the form of photos, can be a risky strategy. To be effective they should be combined with functionality and targeted specifically at the user types we identified

Rich Media, Poor Judgement? A Study of Media Effects on Users’ Trust in Expertise

In this paper, we investigate how interpersonal cues of expertise affect trust in different media representations. Based on a review of previous research, richer representations could lead either to a positive media bias (P1) or increased sensitivity for cues of expertise (P2). In a laboratory study, we presented 160 participants with two advisors - one represented by text-only; the other represented by one of four alternate formats: video, audio, avatar, orphoto+text. Unknown to the participants, one was an expert (i.e. trained) and the other was a non-expert (i.e. untrained). We observed participants' advice seeking and advice uptake to infer their sensitivity to correct advice in a situation of financial risk. We found that most participants preferred seeking advice from the expert, but we also found a tendency for seeking audio and in particular video advice. Users' self-reports indicate that they believed that video in particular would give them the most detailed insight into expertise. Data for advice uptake, however, showed that all media representation, including text-only, resulted in good sensitivity to correct advice

Trust at First Sight? A Test of Users' Ability to Identify Trustworthy E-Commerce Sites

Consumer trust in e-commerce is a key concern in current HCI research. In this paper, we report a study that investigated (1) if users can correctly identify trustworthy vendors based on cues they perceive in the interface. A further aim was to test (2) if users’ judgement can be influenced by the introduction of an affective element — an employee photo. Since such elements have been reported to have negative effects on usability, we also checked for (3) effects of the photo on users’ visual gaze pattern and task performance when interacting with the sites. At first sight of a page, users’ ability to identify trustworthy vendors was not better than chance. Only after detailed exploration could users reach correct trust decisions. A photo only had an effect on participants’ first impression of a vendor. We did not find effects of the photo on task performance

Trust in Mediated Interactions

This article presents a brief overview of the background of trust research and its relevance. It then introduces a framework for trust in mediated interactions that draws on existing models and findings, and applies this to human trust in other humans, organizations (e.g., e-commerce vendors), and technology (e.g., websites). Beyond incorporating variables related to the trusting and the trusted actor, the framework accommodates key contextual factors. Rather than treating trustworthiness as a relatively stable attribute of the trusted actor, the framework considers how trustworthiness is influenced by these contextual factors. This framework will help researchers in aligning disparate research findings and it may be a step towards building a theory of trust in human-computer interactions. For designers, the benefit lies in helping them to fully explore the available design space of systems fostering trust in mediated interactions