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Principles of Design from Trust

(draft) Guidelines for building a better world.

How does one practice Design from Trust? There are two sides to it.

The "Design" side will depend on what field you're working in, from meeting facilitation to education, governance, urban planning, currency design, animal training, publishing, policing, testing, commerce, substance abuse, or choosing an organizational structure. We'll talk about these in Making DfT Concrete.

This page is about the "from Trust" part, which requires a set of groundrules that can spark and maintain trust. If you're thinking this is a challenging mission, you're right. So consider this a malleable first pass.

Please note that a design principle for this page is to keep the DrT Principles compact, brief, memorable, and practical. That's why the list doesn't include things like "Apply the Golden Rule" or "Treat Others Well": the Principles have to be somewhat non-obvious and add considerably to the general concept of Design from Trust.

That said, here's the starting set of Principles (listed alphabetically):

• Not Naïve Trust
• Assume Good Faith
• Be Undefended, Not Defenseless
• Nurture the Commons
• Choose Abundance
• Don't Design All Risks Out
• Serve, Don’t Stalk
• Knowledge Should Accumulate
• Lift as We Climb
• Work with the System, Not Against It
• Make the Right Thing Easy To Do
• Move Upstream Until Your Actions Can be Effective
• Nothing About Us Without Us
• Local Knows Best
• Trust Is Participatory
• We're Citizens, Not Consumers

If you liked this list and want to have a fun time, browse the Role Models for DfT Principles (Brain link) from which I harvested this list.

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This article is cross-posted on Substack here, Medium here and LinkedIn here. It's also here in my Brain.

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