7 UX insights to design for Dutch users
The cultural aspects to be aware of when you localise your product for the Netherlands
In the last few months, I wrote several articles on multiculturalism and design. I discovered the relationship between cultural differences and UX.
I discussed cultural aspects like power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and collectivism. These dimensions give us an introduction to how various countries differ.
It’s nevertheless challenging to classify each country with mathematical scores. Some countries might rank reasonably similarly on the dimensions but still have contradicting UX demands.
I will thus, in the upcoming period, write a number of articles that investigate specific countries. I will look into their citizens' unique digital behaviours and the sociological origins of these traits.
Allow me to make life easy for myself. I will start this series with the country where I lived for the first 30 years of my life: the Netherlands.
Which social behaviours are typically Dutch, and how do they affect UX?
1. The need to be authentic
Growing up in a country makes you blind to the culturally strange things of your environment.
When I had international guests over for the first time, they couldn’t stop speaking about the size of the windows of the Dutch houses.
I really didn’t understand what they meant. But they were right.
In the Netherlands, you can easily peek into everyone’s living room. You can observe what people are watching on TV, what toys their kids have, and what brand of beer is on the table.
The windows of dutch houses are similar to those of shops. Almost an invitation to observe someone’s life.
The reason for this phenomenon can be found in Calvinism.
Catholics can confess. They are allowed to make mistakes in life and can clear their conscience by visiting a priest.
Protestants don’t have this option.
All your actions will be registered in what can be called God’s bookkeeping. Once you appear at the gates of heaven, your balance will be assessed, and your faith will be decided. Heaven or hell.
This meant that it was essential to live a dedicated and honest life. Having secrets was not accepted. Letting people look into your living room is one way to show your environment you can be trusted.
Transparency was, and still is, insanely crucial for Dutch people.
This cultural trait is, also for me as an atheist, hardwired into my habits.
For instance, my employer was quite neurotic about our geographical location during the COVID pandemic. We were expected to stay at our homes close to the office, even though we couldn’t visit work.
Many of us would rather spend the lockdowns with our families in our home countries. As a result, most of my international colleagues put up virtual backgrounds for their Zoom calls.
They were with their families in Spain, Greece, or the UK, but no one could directly notice this. Well, except for a healthy tan that slowly appeared on some faces. :)
For me, altering reality is culturally awkward. I didn’t use any tools to hide my location.
It’s more important for Dutch people to be honest and transparent — and potentially hurt someone — than to stay silent or lie to maintain harmony.
The online world
Jingya Li, of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Twente investigated Cultural Differences in the Use of Instant Messaging Applications.
She compared Chinese and Dutch people and investigated the following hypothesis.
It seems that Chinese people would rather maintain the online identity appreciated by others, no matter if it is consistent with their real identity or not. On the contrary, Dutch care more about their self-consistency between online world and offline world.
As a consequence, Chinese users may be more reluctant to share their personal info in real life, such as their age, address, and location and so on with their online contacts.
She found evidence that Dutch people prefer to keep their online and offline persona the same.
To compare online personality with offline personality, Chinese participants do think they are different, and their online personality might be a better version of their real personality in real life.
Chinese participants believe more that their online personality is different with their true personality than Dutch participants.
Dutch people tend to share their private lives online, similar to having big house windows.
The study concluded:
“Dutch participants have a more positive attitude towards sharing personal info on instant messaging apps.”
2. Time is a currency
Dutch people are obsessed with efficiency. This can be best illustrated by referring to a passage from Max Weber’s 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the deadliest of sins. The span of human life is infinitely short and precious to make sure of one’s own election. Loss of time through sociability, idle talk, luxury, even more sleep than is necessary for health, six to at most eight hours, is worthy of absolute moral condemnation.
Catholics could show respect to God by praying. For Protestants, working was an even more appropriate way to convey your dedication to God. Idleness was a sin.
Even today, we see the romanticisation of work in many protestant and Anglo-Saxon countries. For instance, in television series like Suits, Mad Men, and Succession.
In the Netherlands, labour was a virtue too. It actually still is.
The country has, nevertheless, lost its workaholic mentallity throughout time (we will discuss this later). However, it kept its need for time- and process-optimisation.
Anyone who visits the country might observe how smoothly most things work.
An excellent example of the importance of efficiency is a Burger King campaign specifically designed for the Dutch market.
The fast food chain implemented a function in their app that allows visitors to order their food before arriving at the restaurant. This way, people could avoid queuing or waiting in general. This was the value that was emphasised in the campaign.
Dutch people don’t like to wait, so it’s also not done to arrive late at an appointment.
3. Personal responsibility is taken for granted
The desire for time-saving is also seen in Dutch supermarkets. They mostly rely on self-checkout, which leads to fewer queues and a quicker purchasing user journey.
Naturally, letting customers scan their own groceries brings uncertainty. Do they actually scan all items?
This aspect relates to the cultural dimension of uncertainty avoidance. Something I’ve discussed at length in the past.
Most Mediterranean countries are uncertainty-avoidant and thus don’t rely on self-checkout mechanisms. It’s better to trust a cashier than a customer.
The emotional acceptance of uncertainty of the Dutchies results in more trust in institutions and companies.
An article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research studied the willingness to download a COVID contract tracing app.
The scientists found that Dutch people were not concerned about how their data was treated.
In contrast, Turkish people were only inclined to download the app if they were informed that data handling was protected by law.
Separate analyses for the Netherlands showed that participants who were exposed to a COVID-19 Contact Tracing App (CTA) developed whereby data was protected by law were not more likely to download the app than participants who were exposed to a COVID-19 CTA whereby no information was given about the data protection.
In Turkey, participants who were exposed to a COVID-19 CTA developed whereby data was protected by law were significantly more willing to download the app.
Overall, Dutch people need to be less convinced about reliability. They use fewer trust certificates, and the government and companies generally use fewer rules.
Individuals and companies are expected to act responsibly. The Dutch directness serves as a social control mechanism if they won't.
4. Unique payment systems
One stereotype that holds some truth is that the Dutch are frugal. The term Going Dutch — meaning: splitting a bill — does justice to its origins.
Being conscious about money is another Calvinistic legacy visible in Dutch society.
The country has a relatively positive attitude towards the European Union. However, one aspect that frustrates many is that other countries (especially France and Mediterranean countries) are not as fiscally conservative as the Netherlands or Germany.
“Countries shouldn’t spend money they don’t have, nor should people.”
This is why credit card usage is uncommon in the Netherlands. Only 1/3rd of the people own a credit card, much lower than in most other Western countries.
Anyone with a Dutch bank account can access a domestic payment platform called iDEAL. This is the conventional digital way of paying in the country.
Dutch people pay with iDEAL, not with a Visa Card.
Another well-established concept is het tikkie; a way for people to send a payment request. This is, for instance, used when someone pays for the entire group at a restaurant.
The group usually likes to go Dutch, so the payer sends a tikkie to all friends with the amount everyone is due. They can simply confirm the message and automatically transfer the money to the requestor.
With various names, this concept is also gaining popularity in other countries and with international banks like Revolut.
5. No need to be overly polite
The Netherlands is known for its egalitarian social structure. Hierarchies are not very rigid.
A part of this can be explained by examining how the country has a history of fighting the sea and reclaiming land.
The Netherlands has always had a very elaborate water management culture, including vast networks of dikes, canals, and mills.
Throughout time, a big part of the water has been reclaimed. This land is now populated and needs to be protected from the threat of rising water levels.
Defending yourself against the sea requires collective effort and cooperation.
The Netherlands is a so-called feminine culture, where collaboration is prioritised over competition. It’s, evidently, also a low power distance culture.
How to address people
The Dutch language has formal and informal ways of addressing people, similar to French and German.
Jij, du, and tu are the informal forms in Dutch, German, and French, whereas U, Sie, and vous are the formal equivalents.
In the egalitarian Dutch society, there is usually no need to be overly polite. Addressing someone formally can be seen as distant and insincere.
How this affects UX writing can be observed in banking apps, usually a domain in which professionalism and formal communication are a must.
The Dutch Rabobank app addresses the user informally, but the French Caise d’Epargne and German Commerzbank use a formal tone.
There are some exceptions where using the polite form is preferred in social contexts, but I can’t think of any scenario in which the polite form would be a better option for your Dutch UX copy.
Digital environments are based on mutual exchange and thus, according to the Dutch, informal.
6. A desire to make everything entertaining
Not only do Dutch people approach each other informally, it’s also almost always accepted to make jokes.
Dutch people believe that enjoying life is essential. The country scores high on the cultural dimension of indulgence.
This might contradict the Calvinistic past.
However, the country has always been tolerant towards people with different lifestyles, religions, and outlooks.
Weber describes the decreasing influence of the Calvinistic church in his book as follows:
That there was room in Holland for a great, often uncouthly realistic art proves only how far from completely the authoritarian moral discipline of that country was able to counteract the influence of the court and the regents (a class of rentiers), and also the joy in life of the parvenu bourgeoisie, after the short supremacy of the Calvinistic theocracy had been transformed into a moderate national Church, and with it Calvinism had perceptibly lost in its power of ascetic influence.
It’s also important to mention that in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch Republic went through a period of religious turmoil. This included conflicts between Catholics and Protestants.
To maintain stability, a policy of religious tolerance was adopted. This policy was formalised in the Union of Utrecht in 1579. As of then, various religions were accepted, unlike in many other European countries.
Many Jews and Huguenots (French protestants) migrated to the Netherlands find safety.
Philosophers like Descartes and Spinoza came because it allowed freedom of speech.
LGBTQ+ people relocated to Amsterdam and other cities to live the life they longed for.
This melting pot of ideas and identities was also amplified by the nation's maritime culture and engagement in trade and commerce.
The country has constantly been exposed to many different beliefs.
This, in combination with rapid secularisation, resulted in more room for individual choice and personal expression, including the freedom to indulge in various lifestyle choices.
More than half of the Dutch population works part-time, something unthinkable in many countries. For Dutch people, the quality of life is more important than potential career progress or financial advancements.
Their desire to enjoy life can sometimes be taken to the extreme. The cultural comparison between Turkish and Dutch COVID apps came with a finding that even surprised me.
Separate analyses for the Netherlands showed that participants who were exposed to a COVID-19 Contact Tracing App where gaming elements were included were significantly more willing to download the app than participants who were exposed to a COVID-19 CTA without any gaming elements
In Turkey, we found no significant differences between the gaming conditions and for the other factors.
That’s right. Dutch people were more willing to download a COVID app if it included a game.
As a UX designer, I’ve had many discussions with people from other cultures about informal and playful designs and incorporating jokes.
For me, this has always been a natural thing to do, but many countries consider this inappropriate and unprofessional.
To be honest, I often write one or two jokes in my articles that I decide to remove because I am aware that subtleties in jokes are really hard to grasp for a diverse reader audience.
7. English can be the preferred language
The Dutch are known for their excellent command of the English language. This is not illogical. Dutch as a language is fairly close to English.
Also, a big part of domestic TV is offered in English with Dutch subtitles.
Dutch kids are exposed to English from a young age.
In the current age, the western part of the country is very multicultural. More than half of Amsterdam’s citizens don’t have Dutch roots.
Deciding whether to automatically offer your website or app in Dutch for Dutch users is not an easy task.
I personally dislike it when I encounter an application in Dutch. I had to work with a Dutch version of Photoshop and couldn’t find any of the actions because I was used to the English terms. I wouldn’t even know the Dutch terms.
I communicate and consume content mostly in English. This is similar to many of my friends from Amsterdam.
However, I grew up in the country's east, where people live a more traditional life. These people rely much more on Dutch and prefer their UIs in their native language.
So, in which language should you offer your product?
I hate to use this term, but… it depends.
Conclusion
The main objective of this series of articles is to illustrate that every country, and even region, has its unique characteristics.
Some might think the Netherlands is culturally similar to the UK or Germany, but this is only partially true.
In fact, Dutch culture is most similar to that of Denmark and Sweden.
The Netherlands is an individualistic, egalitarian, high-trust, caring, tolerant, and indulgent society. This is visible in many aspects of life in the physical world, but also digitally.
Things you should be mindful of when adapting your product for the Dutch audience:
- Give the user the option to be authentic.
- Focus on efficiency. Dutch people really hate to waste time.
- Provide other payment methods than credit cards.
- Don’t be overly polite. Casual language is preferred.
- Add some fun to your products.
- Don’t assume Dutch people want their app in Dutch.
Thanks for reading.
I am returning to my windmill retreat in my clogs (the wooden shoes), whilst smoking a joint and carrying a bouquet of tulips to eat some gouda and drink milk and Heineken.
Doesn’t this sound romantic? This is obviously not how Dutch people live. Although, I love my cheese sandwich.
Doei!
