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Selene De La CruzBefore you let a business manage your hard-earned money, you need to trust them.
Selene De La Cruz and her colleagues at Robinhood have developed principles-backed practices that earn the trust of customers who use Robinhood’s brokerages services.
We talked about:
- her work on brokerage products at Robinhood
- how they tailor in-product recommendations based on customer profiles
- her ABCs of building trust with content design: accuracy, brevity, and three Cs – clarity, consistency, and care
- the workflow implications of the legal and compliance obligations that come with financial products, and the way content designers collaborate with their legal colleagues
- how they decide to chunk the delivery of information in their user flows
- the three pillars of trust set out in Frances Frei’s “trust triangle” TED talk: authenticity, logic, and empathy
- how their focus on reliability, accessibility, and care align with Frei’s trust pillars
- how her shift into a management role has expanded her interest in trust
Selene’s bio
Selene De La Cruz is a content designer and community builder based in Brooklyn, NY. A veteran of the NYC advertising world, she pioneered content strategy and UX writing practices for her clients’ brands and helped establish the content design practice at Mastercard. In her current role at Robinhood, she leads a team of content designers in creating intuitive, informative, and sometimes even fun experiences that help democratize finance. She’s also a co-founder of UX Content Design – NYC’s only meetup for UX product content professionals.
Connect with Selene online
Video
Here’s the video version of our conversation:
Podcast intro transcript
This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 155. When you’re designing user experiences for sensitive financial product areas like investing and retirement, it’s crucial to build and maintain trust with your customers. At Robinhood, the online financial services company, Selene De La Cruz and her colleagues follow deeply informed principles to craft content-design practices that have been proven to help customers feel safe and secure as the company helps them manage their investments.
Interview transcript
Larry:
Hey everyone. Welcome to episode number 155 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really happy today to welcome to the show Selene de la Cruz. Selene is the Senior Manager of Content Design at Robinhood. Welcome, Selene. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re doing these days.
Selene:
Hi. Thanks so much for having me on the podcast. Happy to be here. Like you said, yeah, I’m Senior Manager of Content Design at Robinhood. I’ve been there for about a year and a half right now, and I’m heading up our brokerage team. So that’s pretty much all the products dedicated to investing, also including retirement and some of our recommendations products. So I like to think of it as the bread and butter of the app.
Larry:
At least when I as a civilian think about financial stuff, that’s all the big ones right there that you just mentioned.
Selene:
Yeah.
Larry:
And especially that last one. You’re making recommendations about financial stuff. And you probably have all kinds of fiduciary stuff you have to worry about. Tell me, and that’s why I wanted to have you on the show, is to talk about how do you do that? Do you have principles that guide you in how you design experiences for this kind of … ?
Selene:
Totally. We have principles and we also have regulations, and they come together in a beautiful marriage at Robinhood. Before we kind of jump into the conversation, I’ll just clarify that nothing I’m talking about is related to Robinhood stock or company performance indicators. So if you think I’m giving you any signals about new products coming down the pipeline, I’m not. We’re just talking about straight up what’s going on right now.
Selene:
But yeah. Well, for recommendations we do have, when you sign up for Robinhood, you can get a first-trade recommendation. That’s kind of part of our suite of offerings. And for that, we’re kind of basing on the customer’s profile. And then we also do have responsibilities to act in our customer’s best interest. So that’s part of what we do.
Larry:
Well, that’s interesting. I think we all-
Selene:
I mean all of that. Yeah.
Larry:
I think we’d all like to think we’re doing that, but you’re probably legally and regulatorily obligated to do that.
Selene:
Exactly.
Larry:
How does that manifest in a content design practice?
Selene:
Well, maybe I’ll pull it back and speak more to how content design principles can guide content design for these experiences. And this is pulling from, actually, I did a talk about building trust with content design at Confab back in 2022. But I think of it as the ABCs, and then I have three Cs, so bear with me.
Selene:
But for A, there’s accuracy because at its very baseline, if you want to build trust, your content has to be accurate. I really love this idea that I kind of read about somewhere on the internet, but the idea that trust enables you to move from the past into the future. So it’s gathering past evidence of what you know to make a trusting step forward into the future. And if you’re putting out content that isn’t accurate, people can’t have that trust to make the next step with you. So I just thought that concept is interesting. So that’s accuracy for A.
Selene:
B is brevity. I think there’s a lot of kind of pressure in content design to always make your content short and concise, but we also know that you need to give users enough information to build trust with them. So it’s definitely a balance between, especially in the financial space where we’re dealing with very complex concepts, you can easily overwhelm someone with technical jargon, give them too much information, or you can keep it too short, they’re not getting enough information from you. And I think this is something that has really kind of come to play. I’ve seen this play out at Robinhood where we think, “Oh, okay, we’re making an update or we’re offering a new feature.” We’re so excited. We’re going to tell people everything about it. They kind of see it and they’re like, “Whoa, what’s going on? You’re kind of freaking me out. I just want to make my trade like normal.”
Selene:
And so then we’ve had to pull back and say, “Okay, let’s just give them a little bit, a little teaser of, hey, there’s something new here. If you want to learn more about it, travel on to our help center or another screen.” And that can actually be a better way to build trust with them.
Larry:
Yeah, that’s really interesting, I got to say, because there’s two things about that. One, just in this age of information overload that we live in, less is almost always more. But also, when you’re dealing with financial stuff, I mean, maybe I’m one of the more is more people in that camp, but it seems like you want to know all the details, not that anybody reads it, but you want to at least see the fine print. Again, in your practice, how do you balance that? It sounds like you’re looking for just-rightness in the middle. Is that kind of the … ?
Selene:
Yeah. I mean, I think we’re lucky because we work in the digital space, so we have all these different surfaces that we can play around with and these user journeys and user paths that they can take. So even if we’re kind of surfacing information somewhere in one way, we can give a short snippet and then allow them to follow the thread on their own volition. So if it’s someone like you who wants to get into it, read all the fine print, they can do that on their own time. So we can kind of spread it across multiple screens or on a long scroll or whatever we determine is the best way to surface the information versus having to just be like, all right, you’re maybe signing up for your Schwab account in person at the bank or whatever, and they hand you a stack of papers and you’re just sitting there kind of rifling through.
Larry:
That’s the more classic situation. Like you just said, but that points to the benefits of digital and the contrast. Is that the two end of the spectrums, like Robinhood at the cool, new, modern end of things and Schwab where I have an account, and every time I look at it, I feel like I’ve taken a time machine back to 1998? Tell me about that span there.
Selene:
Yeah. And now Robinhood isn’t even the newest player in the game anymore. So we’re actually almost landing somewhere in the middle. But I do, we like to keep up with that innovation, and I think what Robinhood really trailblazed and that we still continue on with, besides democratizing finance for all, which is our mission, but is really the way that we make our financial content accessible. And as part of the reason why I love working there is that our design and our content is really part of what sets the product apart. Being able to communicate to users in a way that is more contemporary, more modern, which really just means speaking to them more in a human way, and our users really appreciate that.
Larry:
And meaning not just a modern visual design and interface conventions in the app, but the actual conversational style that you adopt?
Selene:
Exactly. Yeah. So we really listen to our users and try to understand how they speak about these products, what are their mental models, and we reflect that back to them. And we never like to assume what they know. So we’re always kind of bringing thing back. Bringing it back not to basics. We’re not speaking down to anyone. But we just want to give them information, make all the information accessible to them.
Larry:
Yeah, that’s interesting. Hey, now all of a sudden I want to go back to the ABCs because we had accuracy and brevity.
Selene:
Oh, yeah.
Larry:
Yeah. I want to make sure we finish them. Yeah, sorry.
Selene:
So the Cs, I do clarity, consistency, care. And I think we kind of started talking about clarity, which is, can you understand what I’m talking about? So making the information accessible and clear. I think some way we do this is we have our help center where you can read more about all these topics, very clear, accessible language, defining all the terms. These are things that go into clarity.
Selene:
Consistency is things like consistent use of terminology. So you can learn the term one time and see it again as you continue on your journey. You don’t have to continually learn new terms.
Selene:
And then voice and tone. So I think we come in with a more human accessible voice of tone. Sometimes we can be a little funny or maybe a little edgy, and that carries through no matter where you are in the experience. So every single touchpoint. So you can interact with them. Again, like a human, we’re not being a different person from our customer support to our help center, to in the app. We have that consistency.
Selene:
And then care is, I think I mentioned understanding our users, how they speak about the products. Like all companies, we do a lot of research to understand what do our users need, what do they want, and maybe where are they getting confused? And so we can come into those spaces and help clarify things for them.
Larry:
Do you have ongoing collaborative relationships with your research team? Or is it, you’ve kind of operationalized that customer feedback kind of stuff?
Selene:
Yeah, we have dedicated researchers embedded in each of our teams. So that really allows us to get deep with each topic. So for example, my team handles options trading. They have a very specific nomenclature way of talking about things. And so when we’re creating products for them, we want to reflect their language back to them so they can more easily understand.
Larry:
Interesting. And all of a sudden, I’m wondering, does that go both ways? There’s that lingo is inherited from just the way the options world works and you … Is there sort of a translation thing going on there to take so that people, consumers at this level are using the right language to deal with options stuff? Tell me more about that.
Selene:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there’s kind of a zeitgeist that exists out there of the way that people are talking about these things. And maybe this is where our partners, our partnerships with our legal and compliance team comes in because we’re not just going to say the last thing that was said on Reddit. We need to maintain again, that accuracy and also that compliance.
Selene:
So we work with our legal partners to be like, “Okay, can we say it in this way that’s going to make the most sense to our users? Is it at its very core accurate and also going to be compliant with our regulators?” So all of these things come together to create the language. It’s a lot. I respect the team and the work they do because they have a lot to balance.
Larry:
Well, and I was just thinking of even more work for them, or just curious about the way this is operationalized. Are your workflows, not cumbersome, but are your workflows more detailed to get that sort of compliance check from the legal team or whatever? Or is that a theme there?
Selene:
Yeah.
Larry:
Yeah.
Selene:
I mean, I think this is true probably for all financial services industries, but we do work really closely with our legal and compliance partners. I think something that I’ve kind of been thinking about recently is the fact that I think content design historically as a newer practice, we’re always like, “Oh, bring us in early. We want to be there. We want to shape the product.” And I think we actually do the same with our legal and compliance partners.
Selene:
So we bring them in early to get their buy-in at the product, the PRD stage where we’re talking about product requirements, what is it that we want to build? They’re there and building with us and we get their buy-in. And they’re also, they’re excited about the things that we’re building too. So it’s nice to have them in the room, get their perspective, and they’re definitely there helping us maintain that accuracy. Not always brevity but…
Larry:
The way you just said that, too, I’m really curious now. It sounds like it’s not just greasing the skids to make sure you’ve complied with the compliance things that you need to get to, but also it sounds like you’re really conscious of that relationship with the compliance and legal folks. You’re really nurturing that as well.
Selene:
Oh, definitely, yeah. I mean, I think, again, they’re in all the spaces that we are creating. So that might be the Slack channel where we’re talking about the different products. But their voice, it matters and we rely on them. My team is subject matter experts about the given topic like retirement. They’re also subject matter experts on content design. But we need the legal partners to be the subject matter experts of how may we communicate these things? What are all the technicalities of these products that we’re working on because it is a very complex space. So we definitely rely on them to help us create that accurate content.
Larry:
Yeah. And that kind of complex environment, just generically like you were just saying that it’s real common to have that fairly high-level collaboration between the subject matter experts and the technical experts. They get the design experts, the engineering experts, the product experts in this field. Is there a different feel to the collaboration at Robinhood from other places you’ve been or…?
Selene:
I think so. From what I see, it’s less waterfall approach. I think I come from, my background was in advertising and a lot of times we would create, and then you kind of go to your legal counsel or what have you, and you’re like, “Okay, sign off.” And they’d be like, “Oh, change this word, change that word.” I think now there’s a lot more co-creation. So they’re kind of bought in along the way. And then I’ve seen you’ll literally be in a document together maybe doing some pair writing where they’re like, “Well, I need this concept to come through.” And you’re like, “Okay, well how if we say it this way?”
Selene:
And I think we also end up having a lot more conversations, less about, like yes, we talk about the words, the exact wording of how things need to come through, but we also talk a lot about when in the experience that information needs to be surfaced. So they might say, “Oh, I want to put all this information right here on the very first screen.” And you’re like, “Okay, well that’s … ” acknowledge that we need to surface this information, but let’s take into account what we know about UX writing best practices or even just how people read online, which is that they’re not going to sit there and read everything right then. And if you give it to them right then, they’re going to click Continue. They’re not going to read. They’re not going to get that important information that you want them to have.
Selene:
So again, it kind of goes back to that distribution of information and finding the best place to surface it so that people actually read it.
Larry:
Exactly. And as you say that, I’m thinking more, again, there’s both that compliance part where we talked about a lot that there’s certain stuff that has to be revealed at some point in this flow, but that sort of chunking and the intentional and deliberate doling out of information so that you’re not overwhelming them at any one point, that must … I’m guessing you have equally deep relationships with your interaction designers and the product folks who are mapping this. I guess, the thing I’m curious about in that regard is, is that mapped to product roadmaps, customer journey maps, both, other things?
Selene:
Yeah, I think for this, I’m thinking more at the customer journey level. So how are they going to travel through this experience and what questions are they going to have along the way? So that’s where we really think about conversational design principles. If I think of each screen as answering a user question, then we create the content for that. So if they’re onboarding to a new product and one of the questions they’re going to have along the way is what are the risks, we can surface that at the appropriate moment.
Larry:
Yeah. The way you just said that, I’ve never heard it articulated exactly that way, but I’ve inferred that that’s a thing. Is one thing per interaction, like one question answered per place, is that sort of what you’re going for?
Selene:
Yeah. We try. We try our best to do that. Maybe one screen has sometimes multiple concepts, but yeah, we try to keep it simple for them because again, we’re dealing with complex topics.
Larry:
Yeah. And you’re also dealing, we kind of alluded to this earlier that, well, one, you said that the kind of recommendations are based on the customer profile. They do some kind of survey or something I guess when they first set up their account. There’s both that, and then do you do other kind of personalization or customization of the experience based on, like, savviness level or experience with investing or size of your portfolio or … ?
Selene:
Sure, yeah. There are certain products that are only accessible if you have a certain experience and the customers need to self-report as they fill out their profile. So certain levels of options trading are not accessible to everyone. Margin investing, for example, these products that can carry greater risk, we need to make sure that the customer is informed, doing our due diligence. At Robinhood, we have a value. One of our values is safety first. So that means we’re always prioritizing the customer’s safety above everything else.
Larry:
Yeah, that’s … Well, that kind of comes back to the highest level principles that guide this. That’s one of them safety first. I’m guessing that’s probably an important one. Are there others up at the top, others at that top tier of concerns?
Selene:
Okay, now I’m being quizzed on…
Larry:
Sorry. I don’t want to put you on the … I know that’s … Yeah, I would hate that too in certain contexts.
Selene:
Safety first. Basically all the others kind of boil down to customer centricity, really.
Larry:
Yeah, no, and you can’t go wrong with that approach, I don’t think. And one thing I wanted … All of a sudden, I’m recalling, I don’t know why, something we just said when we first started talking about doing this podcast, you told me about, and I immediately watched Frances Frei, is it Fry or Frei, I’m not sure how to pronounce it, the How to build and rebuild trust TED Talk that she did. And she had that great little triangle of empathy, logic, and authenticity.
Selene:
I’m curious. I don’t know if that was just a personal interest of yours, but does that kind of foundational model of trust, is that sort of ensconced in your work anywhere?
Selene:
Yeah. And I think you’ll link to her in the show notes because the talk is amazing. So definitely recommend to anyone who hasn’t seen it. But yeah, I can kind of briefly explain a little bit about that. It’s half personal interest. And I think her trust triangle really relates a lot to building trust as a leader. But I do think it applies also to building experiences that people trust.
Selene:
So yeah, she talks about the trust triangle. It has three pillars. One is authenticity, which is when people think that they’re experiencing the real you. Logic is when people think that you can do what you promise, so your reasoning and judgment are sound. And then empathy is the third pillar. So that’s when people believe that you truly care about them and their success.
Selene:
So I think it’s kind of clear how these three pieces play into the work that I do as a manager and building trust with my team. So that’s something she talks a lot about.
But we, I’ve actually been working with a little internal tiger team to think about what are the trust building principles of design in general at Robinhood. We have research that states probably obviously that increasing trust is crucial to … Sorry, I just lost my thought. Okay, yeah, increasing trust is crucial to gaining new customers and retaining existing ones. Yes.
Selene:
And then we came up with a few trust building principles that we’re actually currently validating through research. And I think we got facts and findings recently, which I’m excited to dig into. But we were really looking into reliability, which is something that you and I were talking about earlier, which can speak to both that the platform literally works. So every time I open the app, I know that I’m going to be able to place a trade or close out a position, whatever it is that I came there to do. And also reliability in terms of the longevity of the company.
Selene:
We recently launched our retirement product. People need to trust that we’re going to be around when they retire so we can handle that part of their financial journey. And then accessible information. That’s a big one for Robinhood. And genuine care and integrity.
We thought about these. Frances Frei is actually on the Robinhood board.
Larry:
Oh.
Selene:
When I think, that’s where some of our interest in this sparked. But we can see that reliability that really speaks to the logic pillar that she brought up. Accessible information it’s similar to logic, but it has a bit of a twist around the clarity of our communications and education in this space. And then, yeah, genuine care, integrity, that’s similar to empathy.
Selene:
So yeah, I’m excited to dig into the research that’s coming out around this. And I really see our next steps is kind of identify where might Robinhood be weaker in some of these pillars so we can address that. And then, what we want to do with this research is eventually roll it out to create these kind of principles for how we design at Robinhood. So that’s product design, content design, and then the dream is ultimately roll them up into the what of what we build. So helping us guide decisions on new products.
Larry:
Cool. As you’re talking about that, I’m really curious about the research methodology for vetting a body of principles against the values of a community or a customer base. But I guess, is that just sort of in the province of the researchers or have you been involved in that at all?
Selene:
I’ve been involved. We partnered with our brand team. So we have a brand-sentiment research team specifically. And they kind of took some of the work we did and from that turned it into a survey, and put that out into the world. And then they got the responses back and they’re kind of collating that research together for us to look at.
Larry:
Oh, fascinating. And that seems, yeah, that kind of gets, like the point of this podcast is to democratize content strategy, to make its principles and practices accessible to everyone. So just that little kind of thing, I’m sure that that list of principles that you just described, that was probably a lot of work to get to that point. And then you validate them with research. And then you have to figure out how to ensconce it in all your workflows and procedures and everything.
Selene:
Yeah. But I’m excited. I mean, I think people love to know that we are designing in that user-centric way. Part of the reason that I came to Robinhood was just how excited everyone was about the mission and very user-focused in that way. So having these kind of vetted principles and being like, “Oh yeah, am I designing according to these principles that I know my customers want,” I think that will excite the team.
Larry:
That’s great. I can see … I think everybody craves that kind of direction when they’re in high level direction. That sounds really interesting.
Larry:
I want to return to one other thing, too, and something, everything, I’m just constantly being reminded of stuff today. We talked before we came on about, I was talking about how I have a Schwab account and how it just had this kind of stodgy air to it. But we were talking a little bit about how when times are interesting or tough or uncertain, that there’s almost like a benefit to being old-fashioned and, again, not to just focus on these two brands, but Schwab I think kind of exemplifies that old school of financial stuff, and then you would be in the newer wave of it. Is it that just people being more comfortable with more established gray suits or something?
Selene:
Yeah. I mean I think there is a lot to that. In times of uncertainty, you kind of want to go with what’s familiar and what you perceive as a more sure bet. So we recently saw things, I don’t know, the collapse of some banks and that makes people nervous. So they might think about, “Okay, what company do I trust to take care of my money that’s going to be around?” And that might lead them to think about, okay, who has been around the longest, and draw them to a place like a Schwab.
Selene:
So then we have to do some kind of extra work to maybe surface information that has always been true, but it wasn’t necessarily before a question that was being asked. So we might think about 2x amount of money your FDIC insured at Robinhood, which was always true, but we didn’t need to before surface that information because it wasn’t necessarily top of mind for our users, or we didn’t have to surface it in such an upfront way. So yeah, we have to kind of balance.
Larry:
Oh, that’s interesting, the way something like that rises up based on the current conditions.
Selene:
Yeah.
Larry:
I can’t believe it, Selene. These conversations always go way too fast for me. I would expand the conversations to an hour or so, but nobody has time for that … anyhow. But before we wrap up, is there anything last, anything that’s come up in the conversation that you want to revisit or that you just want to make sure we get to before we go?
Selene:
I mean, I think all of this stuff is so, so interesting, and I think as I’ve kind of made the transition into management, I think about building trust in a whole new way. And I think that’s been such a kind of fascinating part of my career to pivot from just focusing on building trust with the users, but also thinking about how am I building trust with my team and how does that kind of manifest from my own communications? So yeah, I just love thinking about that stuff.
Larry:
No, that’s really, and I don’t know if you could, because a lot of these episodes are already in the can and they haven’t aired yet, but you’re right in line. This is a theme I think in the profession right now, that kind of interest and concern. Yeah, that’s super interesting.
Selene:
Hey, one very last thing, Selene. What’s the best way for folks to stay in touch if they want to follow you online or connect?
Selene:
Yeah. Honestly, probably LinkedIn. Good old LinkedIn is the best place to find me. So just Selene de la Cruz there.
Larry:
Okay, great. I’ll link to that in the show notes as well. Well, thank you so much, Selene. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Selene:
Me too. This was fun.
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