Users identify key elements necessary to establish "the trust factor," this could be security certification, brandname association etc. I would say brand perception adds to trustworthiness factor to certain extent. Once that is established, the focus shifts to making a decision.

I think the art of UX design is to identify these key elements based on research and build the architecture such that it drives the user through the shortest and most linear way to execute the decision.

Thanks for another insightful article. The research is catching up with the beliefs we intuitively understood. Is there an equivalent to "thin slicing" for the IVR? What is the supporting literature? Here's an example from our experience: for a utility company we changed the voice when we wanted to provide confirmation of a transaction. We used a male voice to confirm a field visit and a different female voice to confirm a payment made. The change in voice and tone gave a message beyond the mere words.

We often tout the use of a "5-second" test to judge a Web page's layout and architecture – i.e., if you can't figure out the purpose and structure of the page in 5 seconds or less, then it needs redesigning. Based on this research, maybe we should be thinking in terms of a half-second test.

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In his comments, Dr. Schaffer hints at the most important aspect of this phenomenon: intuition and instinct. Certainly our anthropology colleagues can attest to the use of intuition and instinct in our very survival from our genetic roots. That judgments are showing to be "amazingly accurate" is therefore not surprising. Our survival skills are now being triggered in the virtual world of the Web. The Web has obviously expanded the range of types of interactions people have in the virtual world. It's like we're in the savannah again, scanning our environment for opportunities and danger... I would guess that the visual link to instinct and intuition has been in place long before our language-based cognitive processing skills, and is therefore stronger and more well-developed. Indeed, we can all think of many times when our cognitive processing gets in the way of better performance – if you don't think too much, you end up doing better.

I think the traditional cognitive approach made sense when we were only designing applications that did specific things, and will still apply when we design for tasks.

To take thin slicing into account when designing the user experience, it sounds like a stronger tie between marketing, design and usability is implied. But what about testing? Beyond eye tracking, what are the best methods to test for the influence of thin slicing? I used an online A/B comparison survey to try to measure test participants' perceptions of two graphical treatments of a Web site against brand and heuristic values. The outcome was very interesting: there was not a clear "winner." However, one graphical treatment clearly engendered more trust, while the other engendered the sense of ease-of-use and fun. So it seemed to me that the conclusion was to use page elements from one version to convey trust (banner, specific use of graphics and color) balanced with screen elements from the second version to facilitate ease-of-use and scanning (effective grouping and white space, placement of most important information, clear layout). We don't have eyetracking software to confirm these conclusions so I hope I was on the right track...