Design for Trust

Abstract

Trust is a human mechanism that opens doors to innovation and progress. Especially when risk is involved, trust will create a bridge between you and an opportunity and will enable that crossover. I believe design can form such a bridge, and in this project I explored how design can create trust.
This project was done in the context of a connected farmer platform for Rabobank. The bank wants to move from a service provider to a connector between clients. This will change the relationships they have and new relationships will be established. These new types of relationships are unknown and trust does not exist here. Rabobank, like many other cooperations, used to be able to produce and control trust themselves. Now, this way of creating trust no longer works, and people are looking for other ways to create trust relationships. Technology enables a new type of trust in which people place trust in one-another in stead of a service provider. This creates an interesting opportunity for Rabobank as a connector, because it enables the establishment of trust between clients with Rabobank as facilitator of that trust relationship.
Two main strategies for creating trust can be defined. Contextual trust relies on contextual properties to inform a person about their trustworthiness. Contextual trust is confirmed by control mechanisms such as formal agreements and structural controls. Very different from that we can define intrinsic trust. This type of trust is centred around one’s intrinsic motivations and is communicated through observable actions that eventually accumulate into a reputation.
The strategies enable different types of relationships and collaboration structures. Contextual trust works best in situations with hierarchy and authority. Intrinsic trust is very different and enables self-coordination though autonomy. These strategies are very different but also go well together. Most relationships leverage both strategies to create trust. But also it is important to be cautious with them because contextual trust mechanisms can potentially hurt the foster of intrinsic trust. A historical analysis shows how Rabobank has always been able to work from a trust relationship. The way the bank works has changed immensely and these types same relationships are no longer an option. The bank is still very allied to the agricultural sector and a new dynamic between bank and sector has to be found in order to work together. Rabobank is a cooperative bank, and even though not many people really understands what this really means it tuned out to be an interesting asset. Especially because farmers are so very used to work in these types of structures. A cooperative structure enables new ways of working, and enables a new structure in which Rabobank has to define its role. All findings and insights were synthesised into a design proposal (Figure 2) for a data sharing platform for Rabobank. The setup of the platform also highlights Rabobanks role (Figure 1), with its many trust consequences. The visualised platform highlights many trust mechanisms and shows what they would look like in this context.