How Brave Browser uses ethical design to win customers vs Google Chrome

Ethical Design is designing great products alongside brand morals and human values. Some basic principles that fulfill the needs of good ethical design are: 1. Usability 2. Accessibility 3. Privacy 4. Transparency and Persuasion 5. User Involvement 6. Focus 7. Sustainability

Online privacy always has been a hot topic and despite Google’s claims of “not selling user’s data” they links harvested data to individuals ultimately selling them to adverts. This made many to look up for alternative, safe browser and Brave is winning these customers through ethical design.

When user visits Brave’s website, they’re catching visitors attention straightaway mentioning “3x faster than Chrome”, “Better protection than Google…”.

They even providing Online Privacy comparison between popular browsers which is more impactful for convincing the visitor about Brave’s privacy.

Brave’s interface is similar to chrome. People prefer familiar experiences. That’s why Brave uses Chromium, the open source browser project used by majority of internet users including Chrome users.

Brave downloads small sized(under 2 MB) setup file when “Download Brave” button is clicked, rather than downloading bigger file and keeping you waiting on their website. It leads to more users completing the total download process.

Switching to a new browser, user will immediately miss favorite bookmarks, settings, extensions.

Brave gets straight on the point by giving option to import bookmarks, settings and even extensions which are available for Brave directly from other browsers.

And suddenly all bookmarks appear on the next screen. They could have visualized the importing process. People trust and value more when they see the underlying work.

But they draws user’s attention towards privacy again, which they clearly mentioned previously on their website.

With privacy in focus, they certainly could do a better job by not keeping Google as default search engine.

Users main focus when installing Brave is browsing safely and quickly. Rewards, tokens on the next screen seems overkill for new Brave users. They could have introduced the rewards system at a later stage.

A nice home layout! and three dashboards highlighting 1. Privacy Protection 2. Data Savings, and 3. Time Saved, which not only is important to user but also summarizes Brave’s brand positioning. Customer’s psychology level is highly positive in Brave’s on-boarding experience.

Truly great products respect people’s time and attention while reflecting human values(safety, belonging, empathy). Brave’s business model relies on these ethical pillars which allows them to compete with tech giants like Google.

To read more about the case study from which I gained the insights: https://growth.design/case-studies/brave-browser-onboarding