Qualities That
Create Confident Users

The amount of confidence, or trust, a user has is an important part of any successfull product. Thankfully, we can promote user confidence by by understanding and addressing the qualities that influence it.

The user of a product wants to feel and believe that it will behave as expected, and not another way. Products that behave as expected create trusting, confident users, while those that don't foster mistrust and confusion. User confidence is a reflection on the amount of trust a product has established with its user.

This is an important part of any user experience. When attempting to complete a task, such as making a purchase or editing a profile, users want to be confident with their actions and outcomes. They want to know they're 'doing it right'. They want to feel their personal information is secure.

How confident a user feels, or their confidence rating, can be determined through usability testing. For example, MeasuringU, a usability testing group, will ask users how confident they are that they completed a task, and measure it using a seven-point rating scale.

As UX designers we know that 'good user experiences' improve the likelihood that a product will be successful. It stands to reason that a user with 'low confidence' will also be having a 'bad user experience', which would mean a decrease in the likelihood product success.

Therefore, we can assume the following about how a user's confidence level relates to business and product goals:

Understanding the effects of user confidence is a good start, but what can be done to address it?

Like many UX design considerations, A user's confidence is effected by a number of factors. In an attempt to simplify things I've grouped the influencing factors into qualities, or characteristics, that succesfull products share.

Qualities of User Confidence

When looking up phrases such as 'what makes a good leader?, or 'how to be successfull', you'll undoubtedly find a number of lists detailing the specific traits, characteristics, or in our case 'qualities', that go into making a 'good leader' or 'successfull person'.

Since the qualities that make up a 'good leader' or 'successfull person' are numerous and variable, these lists tend to be high-level overviews of a 'core set' of qualities that these people have in common.

I felt taking a similar approach would help when discussing something as nebulous as 'user confidence'. As stated earlier, a user's confidence is effected by a number of overlapping, often-nebulous, factors. Therefore, to simplify and ground a discussion on the topic, I've grouped the common factors into the following 3 qualities:

These qualities provide a high-level understanding of confidence issues as well as a common language to discuss them.

Now, by reviewing each quality and the factors they're influenced by, we can discover practical solutions to the confidence issues we face.

Common Factors of User Confidence

The qualities presented above are a nice start, providing a high-level understanding of the topic and a relatable 'real-world' way to discuss it. But for practical solutions we'll need to understand the core factors that effect each quality.

Consistency

• The product reinforces established patterns, navigation paradigms, placement of elements, etc.
• Messaging perpetuates and extends the viewpoint of the larger ecosystem.

Aesthetic

• Users instinctually know that design quality goes hand-in-hand with over-all quality. Essentially, good design must look good.
• An aesthetic product has an inherent power of being able to fascinate and immediately appeal to its user's senses

Balance

• The product weighs the amount and detail of communication necessary to maximize user effectiveness. Constant tooltips can be distracting and bothersome, but infrequent messaging might convey a lack of quality.
• Consider the ‘Goldilocks Principle’ when seeking a balance between excessive (too much) and insufficient (too little) communication.

Purpose

• Your product is intended to help a user with something they need to accomplish, therefore task completion must be the primary objective of design.
• Once the task is established, design, technology and content fall easily into place

Assurance

• Digital trust is the confidence people have in a platform’s ability to protect and promote the interests of its users.
• Users are assured their personal information is secure via messaging, interactions, and quality.

Empowerment

• The product allows users to take control. They can explore and choose their own path. They can decide how they want to use it.
• Develop a clear hierarchy, make interface elements meaningful, and provide clear directions.
• Identify pain points by combining analytic and A/B testing data.

Lucidity

• The core functions, tasks, or activities are easily seen, recognized, and understood.
• The product takes advantage of learned behaviors by conforming to established mental models.
• Messaging styles (prescriptive and personal, educational and instructional) are divided for improved delivery and comprehension.

Restraint

• Your product is designed with intent.
• Practice moderation, and aim to solve problems simplistically.
• Avoid imprinting your own identity or implementing design elements just for the sake of it.
• Glean elements that distract from essential features or requirements.

Presence

• The invisible effects of good UX.
• Elements are placed or appear when expected or needed. Contextual cues help orient and guide the user, and present a more cognizant experience.

To summarize, we've defined 'user confidence', explored its effects, grounded our understanding by grouping common factors into qualities, and reviewed those common factors while considering practical applications.

I hope this has been helpful. Feel free to contact me with questions or constructive feedback, especially when it comes to practical applications (which could use its own article).