Stephanie Lucas: Content Design and Trust at LinkedIn – Episode 156

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Designing for trust is a team effort, and it’s crucial to keep everyone aligned on such important work.

At LinkedIn, the trust team has created a framework to guide that alignment. The RISE framework is built on an acronym that describes how LinkedIn wants its members to feel: respected, informed, safe, and empowered.

We talked about:

• her trust advocacy work as a content designer at LinkedIn
• the challenges presented by trying to measure trust
• the RISE framework they use at LinkedIn to help designers create trustworthy experiences
• its basis of the RISE framework in prior work at the company on codifying and articulating principles around trust
• the elements of the RISE acronym: respected, informed, safe, and empowered
• the importance of proactively engaging and involving a wide range of stakeholders when crafting a framework like this
• the key role of content design in designing for trust
• the way they have made trust everyone’s job at LinkedIn
• the importance of instilling trust design as a routine practice, not a due diligence check box at the end of a process
• her enthusiasm for the release of Harry Brignull’s new book Deceptive Patterns

Stephanie’s bio

Stephanie Lucas is a Staff Content Designer and Trust specialist at LinkedIn, where she’s focused on trust, privacy and other safety features. She’s been a vocal advocate for design ethics thinking, privacy best practice awareness, and making safe products for users.

Stephanie has led workshops at California College of the Arts and Northwestern University, as well as several user experience design industry groups. She’s been featured on multiple design podcasts as well as speaking engagements discussing ethical practices in product design. She’s also a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

Connect with Stephanie online

• LinkedIn

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

Podcast intro transcript

This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 156. Designing the web’s largest business-focused social media platform is a complex, highly collaborative endeavor. At LinkedIn, Stephanie Lucas and her colleagues pay particular attention to crafting experiences that instill trust for the platform among their members. Content design plays a key role in this effort. Stephanie’s recent move from a trust advocate position into content design highlights the close alignment between trust and content.

Interview transcript

Larry:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 156 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I’m really happy today to welcome to the show Stephanie Lucas. Stephanie’s a content designer at LinkedIn where she specializes in trust issues. Welcome, Stephanie. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you’re up to these days.

Stephanie:
Hi, Larry. This is great. I’m really excited to join you on this. I think your series is awesome. Yeah. I work at LinkedIn. I’ve been there over 11 years. I live in San Jose, California and I have four cats, so if you hear a meow in the background this… Hopefully that won’t happen. But yeah, I’ve been working at LinkedIn for a while. And I started in the brand and marketing design team way back in 2012, and then I moved into product design. But at the time, what they needed most was help with their trust products.

Stephanie:
And so, I was basically, “Sign me up,” because I was new into product design at that time. And lo and behold, I found out I had a real fondness for the work. I felt it was very meaningful and impactful work and super important. This was before all of the Cambridge Analytica and GDPR stuff, but it just became very important to me and I decided to make it my own.

Stephanie:
And so, I’ve been doing trust, first design. But then I rolled into being a trust advocate and helping to educate our design organization about emerging privacy regulations and so on. And it became my brand, which I was very happy to see happen. And now, I am content design, working on features in our product and our app that have to do with keeping you safe, helping you be confident, helping people understand that our community is one of professionalism. It is not a free for all. And helping work with features that boost that.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Lately, the most exciting thing that I’ve been working on is we’ve been rolling out the ability to verify on LinkedIn. That was a really exciting project to work on and we’re really happy with that. It’s free by the way. That’s what’s going on. And what I really, really like about doing content design for trust is I have this weird glitch in my head where I really like things that are just hard and complicated and borderline chaotic in terms of the fact that it’s really hard to talk about privacy stuff and all of these really complex systems that, since the dawn of Web 2.0 at least, we’ve become part of the internet. Explaining that is really hard and I love that. That’s my eternal fascination with this.

Larry:
The way you just said that is fascinating to me because trust is something you probably don’t want to have to explain it. It just needs to be there, right?

Stephanie:
It’s very hard to quantify in the first place. It’s very hard to come up with a metric for trust. There are industry surveys that come out. We’ve always been in the top or close to the top in terms of the annual digital trust report. But yeah, other than that, it’s not about engagement. It’s the opposite. Not the opposite, but it’s like trying to get people what they need quickly without having to live in settings forever. It’s just a whole different deal. It’s really hard to measure trust. It’s one of those things you know when you see it, but it’s really hard to explain it.

Larry:
Exactly. But one of the ways… Given that, and that makes perfect sense the way you just said that it’s going to be fuzzy and difficult to measure, but you can still, you’ve done this thing at LinkedIn called RISE, this initiative to help people internally understand how to design better to instill trust in folks. Can you talk a little bit, because I’m fascinated by this project, I’d love to hear more about it.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I think it was back in 2018 our… LinkedIn, first thing I have to do is take a step back and say, as a social network, LinkedIn is very unique in terms of that it is your reputation, your livelihood is tied up in your presence and your activity on LinkedIn. Unlike other more casual or leisurely social networks, we are very knitted to your reputation and your livelihood.

Stephanie:
In I believe it was 2018, we came out with the company came out with these five principles of trust, like members first and clarity, consistency and control. And there’s three others. And these are wonderful. And it was so key, and this is key to the building of the framework that you just referenced for our design, for the user experience design organization to have leadership, C-level leadership establish an actual principles of trust because we realized it’s an existential proposition for us.

Stephanie:
Well, my manager at the time and I sat together. We’re like, “We’re very excited about these principles, but they don’t translate into how you execute the work per se.” There’s a lot of interpretation still. And when we’re having conversations with our product partners that are very gung-ho to get to market, we don’t want to have to be interpreting these things on the fly. We need a framework. We need a how. The principles were the what, we need a framework for the how.

Stephanie:
And so, we started talking about how do we build this framework to help designers understand in the moment what’s probably the best thing to do. We decided to think about it. Well, first of all, we pulled together a dedicated workroom where we’re in there trying to figure it out. And from the get-go, obviously we all know as designers that the strongest start you can have is to involve all your cross-functional partners.

Stephanie:
We had engineers, we had product manager, we had our legal partners, we had research people, we had all parties in the room participating. And we’re so, so grateful for that. A lot of times it’s scary to bring cross-functional partners because you’re going to think, “They don’t see it the way I see it,” but that’s so misguided. You have to be able to see it, how they see it. Everybody has to see it, how everybody sees it.

Stephanie:
We decided as we’re in the room, that because we were user experience designers, we wanted to go at this from the point of view of our members experience. And of course, at LinkedIn we say members, we don’t say users, but if you hear me say members, that’s what I mean. We wanted to look at it from the members’ experience.

Stephanie:
In that case, so we started identifying our pain points. What do we think our member pain points are? Well, we have support tickets and we have voice of the member stuff and all the data we could bring into that. Or we have our user research partners as well. We role-played. We said, “I wish we could do this when this happens,” kind of thing. We did all that.

Stephanie:
And we started affinity mapping all our stickies into areas of focus. It might be preventing account abuse. And even we took equity and accessibility into account as well into all of this. My manager and partner in this, Andrew, was saying, “We need to come up with an acronym. That’s how things get used.” It was always top of mind for us to make this thing sustainable, sustainable, sustainable – and useful.

Stephanie:
We played with acronyms. We had one that was STAR and we workshopped that to, or we ran that pass our entire design all hands and we said, “Tear it apart. They did.” And we went back to the drawing board with that new information. And eventually, all of us are in the room and we’re working these different acronyms, these concepts that represented these affinity maps of streams of thought. And RISE is what we ended up with.

Stephanie:
RISE means…. And it was funny. It was one of those magical things where you just want to be there when this thing happens, like rainbows. And like, “This is it. This is it. We found it.” It’s R is stands for respected. We want our members to always feel respected. That means we don’t put our goals ahead of theirs ever. We want them to feel informed. That’s the I. we want people to have a fair understanding of what’s happening with their data and how they can take steps when things don’t go and so forth.

Stephanie:
Safe. That’s the S. And safe doesn’t just mean physical safety, it can mean safe from making a financial mistake or something like that, or your reputation is safe. And then lastly, E. E is empowered. We give people what they need quickly and get out of their way. Let them get back to what they’re really on LinkedIn for.

Stephanie:
That’s RISE. And I will tell you this has stood the test of time. It has been broadly used. And the reason we’re very strongly believe the reason it’s broadly used is because we started with the village mentality. We had everybody. And we openly roadshowed it to review it. Give all the product managers, “Check this out, give us your feedback,” and everything. We got feedback and we made incremental adjustments, but it worked.

Stephanie:
When you look at where we are right now. Its origin story was more in the… There’s the cat, the MeToo stuff, the Cambridge Analyticala stuff, the misinformation, certainly effort. That’s like the formative era of Rise. Now though, five years of RISE, we’ve got generative AI stuff coming in. Every new emerging, we know the questions to ask at this point. That’s the main thing. Rise helps with the questions to ask.

Larry:
Because as you say that, I’m thinking because… Rise predates those, like the Me Too movement, the Cambridge Analytica stuff and all that. When those happen, you’re not caught off guard. You’re like-

Stephanie:
Well, no actually, RISE, it was a bit after that.

Larry:
It was right after it. Yeah.

Stephanie:
But it was built on the conversations and the independent solutions that we had. And actually, that’s why we decided that we need a framework. Because we can’t keep reacting to these things. And I think it goes to what I was just saying, is like RISE helps us understand the questions.

Stephanie:
And very importantly, with all of that acceptance from all the product managers and all of the cross-functional partners, now when a designer, on their own, in a conference room, or on a Zoom meeting, with their product partner has that, this doesn’t feel right moment. They can say, “Well, this doesn’t follow RISE.”

Stephanie:
That’s the answer. They can actually just point to something that everybody’s agreed on. And I can’t overemphasize how important that is. And it all started really, because our leadership decided that trust was existential.

Larry:
And they articulated those principles that you built this off of. And the way you just said that too, it’s like you said earlier something about you know it when you see it. And so people, it’s a little mechanism to give people something to hang… They can be like, “Ah, this doesn’t feel quite right. Oh, that’s right, RISE. This doesn’t inform people so it doesn’t comply with the I,” or something like that. Is that how it works day-to-day for the…

Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean every case is going to be different. There’s going to be some that I think probably the R does most of the heavy lifting because… And I really wish every single current software company had something where respect is the first letter in the acronym they’re using because it’s so important to remember who’s in charge here. Our members are in charge.

Stephanie:
Right now, in fact, the industry is in a very big… COVID, we came out of COVID like a shotgun. People wanted to just get back to market. And just so many companies right now are racing solutions to market. We still have to be in that very important mindset of remembering who our users are and how important it is to respect them and what they need. And not insist or drive our product ahead of what users are asking for, what’s good for them. I think this moment RISE is needed as much as ever.

Larry:
Exactly. And the way you just said that too, that post-COVID dynamic of like, “Boom. Okay, let’s get going. Things are back to… Let’s move it.” And then, you mentioned earlier the gung-ho product folks who are just… And their job is to ship new features and ship new-

Stephanie:
And we do amazing work because we do amazing solutions.

Larry:
Yeah. But you had product buy in. That was part of that giant team of… Yeah.

Stephanie:
100%.

Larry:
Yeah. No, the age-old stakeholder alignment thing playing out really nicely here.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s scary to do, but you have to.

Larry:
Oh, yeah. And you can see the benefits now of rather than going like, “Oh, sorry, we forgot to talk to you.” You’re like, “No, remember we talked about this five years ago?”

Stephanie:
Yeah. One thing that in trust design we really do, in content design, is you can’t be an impediment to people or they’ll stop coming to you. If you want to… You have to work as a partner. Yeah. You have to do it.

Larry:
Yeah, no, that’s really interesting too because this is like a similar period where design systems have come to the fore and things like that, where you can’t just impose them on people. They have to be, you’re advocating for them, evangelizing them, trying to democratize the principles that go with them. Is that how it works?

Stephanie:
Yeah, it’s help them see the benefit. Right.

Larry:
Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I want to get into just a little bit. I’m sure this applies, it sounds like everybody’s using this, but in particular, content design. And you work with the content design team now as well. Just in terms of helping people understand how this applies day to day. How has this helped content designers in their work to instill more trust?

Stephanie:
Well, when it comes to content design, so what I was doing is I mentioned that I transitioned from trust advocate designer to content design. What I was… In the previous role, I noticed how key content design was to trust. The overlap is almost 100%. Because anybody who’s a content designer who’s listening to this understands that you will have a 15-minute conversation or more over a two word button text if it’s not accurate about what’s going to happen when this person clicks this button it’s not a trustworthy button text.

Stephanie:
And just stuff like that where you want to paint an accurate picture. You want people to not be surprised, unpleasantly surprised. You definitely want to keep it as concise as possible, but in a lot of cases, it’s if you are talking about something like consent or something like that, it can get a little tricky to keep it concise, but also make it understandable.

Stephanie:
One of my favorite examples is if you open up a Chrome incognito screen, I think a lot of people don’t even look at the splash screen. They just go to where they’re going. You should open that up and look at the wall of text that’s there that explains to you what an incognito screen is and what it is not.

Stephanie:
It’s such a simple thing, and it’s such a well-intended product to have something where the browser’s not tracking you, but nobody really understands what… A lot of people misunderstand it. It’s so interesting to see how it takes a whole page of explanation about what this browser does and doesn’t do. That kind of thing is really fascinating too, because you have to find that line between clarity and conciseness.

Stephanie:
But the other thing that’s really important trust wise in content design is consistency. Using the same construction for like experiences, because consistency does build trust as well. It really is interesting how many ways good content and trustable content are the same thing. I want more content designers to come over into the world of writing for trust so I’m trying to make this sound attractive.

Larry:
Well, the way you just said that, we’ve all been there, debating for hours over a word choice. And in many of those cases it’s because you just, it doesn’t feel-

Stephanie:
It seems ridiculous when it’s happening.

Larry:
Yeah. And you brought to light with the RISE framework, I think, that you have a way to articulate, “It’s not quite doing, it’s not quite informing.” Or whereas, in some of those conversations, at least that I’ve been in, you’re just like, “It just doesn’t feel right,” and you can’t articulate it. I’m like, that’s never a helpful way to advance things.

Stephanie:
Yeah. And the other thing too with RISE is reality is that you might not be able to solve for all four. It sounds funny to say this, but you might not be able to hit all four squarely. You might have to say, “Well, in this case, respect is more important than empowered. Or safe is more important than empowered,” or something like that. You might have to do that. But the point is that you have those dots, you have those marks there, that they’re always the same marks, and you know what the rules of the road are.

Larry:
That reminds me of that truism that a lot of, I think products and other business people have. You can have price, quality, speed.

Stephanie:
Kind of like that. Yeah.

Larry:
Those little sliders that you push one and the other… One of them has to change.

Stephanie:
Right. It’s not quite that drastic because usually, it’s a little more nuanced than that. But the fact of the matter is that the work we do right now is really complex in concepts and implementation and all of that. The solutions aren’t going to be mono-chromatic. They’re just, they’re complicated.

Larry:
Well, it just keeps getting more complex too, just everything from regulations…

Stephanie:
And faster.

Larry:
Like GDPR and CCPA to. And then to, and one of the most… I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up generative AI in this thing, but it seems like having a framework like RISE around in this day and age, you’re ready for it. Is that how it feels to you as you work with it?

Stephanie:
Well, it certainly helps us understand how to approach it. We have this foundation. We know what the expectations are. And by the way, I didn’t mention this, but ever since the earliest days of RISE, the mantra has been to each and every designer that trust is your responsibility.

Stephanie:
There was a day in LinkedIn’s design history where we had a mobile team. I think maybe everybody’s had a mobile team at one point. That obviously turned into mobile-first product thinking, and that went away. We still do have a trust design team, and the trust design team used to have a lot of sway in telling other pillar products what they should and shouldn’t do.

Stephanie:
That’s not the case anymore. It hasn’t been for five years. Everybody owns trust. Everybody’s answers to that. And actually, that brings up a point too I wanted to make is that I firmly believe that everybody that touches design that has anything to do with the data, needs to become smarter about privacy, best practices and regulations.

Stephanie:
I think that policymakers are trying to do the work of helping designs be better without having designers at the table. And that has resulted in some comical decision making, which we don’t have time to get into, but I very much encourage folks to take it upon themselves. I think every designer should have a baseline of accountability even for understanding privacy and asking those questions, asking the right questions.

Stephanie:
When we hire designers, privacy best practices should be one of the interview questions. It’s silly at this point for us to be expecting the legal team to take care of it. It’s our job.

Larry:
And the way you just said that reminds me, it strikes me that there’s probably some parallels to accessibility, where that used to be a thing at the end where they just made sure that you could [inaudible]

Stephanie:
I think it’s still is in a lot of cases.

Larry:
I know.

Stephanie:
From what I’ve been seeing on the web.

Larry:
Yeah. But there is some effort to incorporate it earlier, but just it should be every designer’s job to consider accessibility at every juncture. It should be every designer.

Stephanie:
And equity, all of that. Yeah.

Larry:
Exactly. All those important kind…

Stephanie:
Yeah. And it’s not something that’s… I don’t know. Yeah, I think we’re still in that era where a lot of people think of this as due diligence, and it shouldn’t be. It should be just basic product thinking.

Larry:
Yeah, that’s a whole other conversation moving from due diligence to regular practice. But yeah, I can’t believe it, Stephanie, we’re already coming up close to time. These conversations always go way too fast. But before we wrap up, is there anything last, anything that has come up in the conversation that you want to revisit or that you just want to make sure you share before we wrap up?

Stephanie:
Well, I do want to mention something interesting that’s recently… And this goes to the point of designers getting more involved in privacy thinking. Harry Brignull, who coined the term Dark Patterns, he’s a design leader. And the dark patterns term has been mentioned in policymaking now. It’s deeply embedded into legal thinking because thanks to Harry, I might’ve said Henry, I meant Harry, he’s got a new book coming out and it’s called Deceptive Patterns. And I’m very, very happy about this. He’s pivoted because Dark Patterns is not only perpetuates the idea that dark was bad, it’s vague. It doesn’t say what it is.

Stephanie:
The whole community is trying to pivot to Deceptive Patterns. I’m really excited about this. I can’t wait to see his book and check it out. I think this is a perfect opportunity for designers and content designers to start taking this stuff seriously and becoming invested in it, spreading the good word, thinking about policy.

Stephanie:
When, for example, California Attorney General Office asked for comments on a new guidance for privacy, make a comment, participate. That’s how this kind of stuff, we can help this stuff. We know what we’re doing. We know how to do this right, so let’s get more involved.

Larry:
Excellent. Yeah, and I love that the originator of the phrase is doing a whole book to change it. That’s perfect. I’m very excited about that. Hey, one very last thing, Stephanie, what’s the best way folks want to follow you on, say, a social media platform?

Stephanie:
Well, you know I’m going to say… Well, I don’t have a… I’m not going to mention the other platforms. I’m sorry. There’s some rebranding in the news this week, so I’ll just let that one go. But no, on LinkedIn, you can reach me, Stephanie Lucas – happy, happy, happy to meet. I got a lot of great content design community there already, a privacy community and design community, so really looking forward to meeting anybody.

Larry:
Excellent. Well, thanks so much, Stephanie. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Stephanie:
Same here. Have a great week.