Designers are regularly asked to create objects and spaces that may help build trust among users. Research indicates that encouraging trust via design faces new challenges. Kushlev and Proulx report that, “Using data from a large nationally representative survey (World Values Survey: Wave 6), we found that the more people relied on their mobile phones for information, the less they trusted strangers, neighbors and people from other religions and nationalities. In contrast, obtaining information through any other method – including TV, radio, newspapers, and even the Internet more broadly – predicted higher trust in those groups. Mobile information had no bearing on how much people trusted close others, such as their family.”
Kostadin Kushlev and Jason Proulx. 2016. “The Social Costs of Ubiquitous Information: Consuming Information on Mobile Phones Is Associated with Lower Trust.” PLoS ONE, vol. 11, no. 9.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.