Trust Experiments

Positive social connections are the most powerful driver of human health and happiness. But the modern world has been designed in ways that make it really hard for us to experience the good in one another. Buildings. Streets. Cities. Social media. AI. Governments. When designed poorly, all these systems drive people apart. If we have the courage to redesign them, we can reclaim the trusting connections that keep us happy and strong. But that work must be guided by evidence at the intersection of design and human psychology.

This newsletter shares dispatches from design experiments happening in buildings, cities, social science labs, digital environments and in governments around the world. It offers insights from the realms of neuroscience, psychology and sociology, and occasionally, results of trust experiments I’ve conducted in my own life.

If you help create physical or digital environments for humans, or if you simply want to understand how the systems around you influence your own social world, Trust Experiments should help.

About Charles

Charles Montgomery is an award-winning writer, design thinker and speaker who leads transformative experiments, research and interventions to improve human wellbeing around the world. His forthcoming book, The Trust Experiments, examines why our trust in each other is collapsing — and how we can redesign the systems around us to get it back. His 2014 book, Happy City, explores the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness. Charles’s collaborators include the World Health Organization, the Guggenheim Museum and dozens of cities in Canada, the USA, Mexico, New Zealand, the UAE and Poland. He is the founder of Happy Cities. Learn more about Charles here.

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