Designed to make me (un)comfortable

What is comfortable to someone from one culture, can be uncomfortable to someone from another culture.

Take the “payment request” feature that all banking apps in The Netherlands now have. You send someone a link to ask them to pay you a specific amount. For example, if you paid for dinner and your friend owes you half of the bill. We call it “sending someone a Tikkie” (named after the first app that launched this feature here).

The hidden value behind this feature is fairness: everyone shall make an equal financial contribution to a group activity. Sharing the costs is so embedded in our culture, there is even an international term for it: “Going Dutch”. It has a Wikipedia page and all.

If you grew up in The Netherlands, it’s easy to think that splitting costs evenly is not just common practice here, but everywhere else too. After all, who doesn’t believe in fairness? While it is a pretty universal human value, how people practice fairness in everyday life can differ drastically across cultures. As this tweet nicely illustrates:

Even for me, born and raised in The Netherlands, sending payment requests always feels a bit uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up in a typical Dutch family. If I already paid for something, it feels unnatural to send friends “the bill”. It makes me feel like a company sending an invoice. What was a social transaction (dinner with friends) now becomes an economic transaction (you owe me money). It’s not just asking for the money that is uncomfortable, it is also the social pressure of friends who expect me to send the link. Oh, Dutchies.

Luckily the payment request feature has evolved. Now most banking apps also offer the option to let the receiver of the request pay whatever amount they feel comfortable paying. With a small design change, an uncomfortable experience has been turned into a comfortable experience. Unless you are the kind of person who is uncomfortable deciding for yourself what is fair, of course.