October 25, 2023

OW #14: “‘I Understand’: Navigating the Dutch Immigration Center Website” by Maisa Imamović

In this issue, web developer and writer Maisa Imamović dissects a tiny yet crucial user experience that occurs during the process of obtaining a residence permit. Adopting an intimist tone, Imamović stays close to minimal interaction elements such as menu items and buttons while considering their cultural significance and their rhetorical effects on the user. This contribution is a unique example of cultural criticism by means of ‘user journey’ and speculative interface design.

Sometime in April of 2021 (the 11th), after 8 years of acting as a citizen who meets the criteria needed to obtain a permanent residence permit (type IV) in the Netherlands, I applied for said permit. Like most similar applications, mine was accompanied by an interface that tracks the updates on my case, as well as the authoritative decisions that would either close it or perpetuate it. Let’s explore this interface.

Ind dot nl is a rather friendly website. To the right of the traditional, yet modern, logo of the Immigration Center in the Netherlands (IND), the user is given the option to choose the interface’s language. Logo = scary, English = thank you. The fixed header includes the menu buttons (Residency in the Netherlands, Dutch citizenship, News, About us ⌄, Work for, Service & Contact), as well as the most important button in my case: the Inloggen button which leads to the login page.

Logging into My IND portal is a very cyber-secure user experience. The portal is connected to an app on my phone (DigiD app) where my social security number is saved and set up. To log in, I have to insert my passcode in the app, which leads to a random verification code generator that I have to type in the designated area of the login page. Once the code passes through, the page generates a QR code that I have to scan, then, with my phone camera.

Once my devices are officially synced a homepage is reavealed that lists my open applications. At the moment, there is none. Back in 2021, the quest to get a permanent residence permit would be represented as a vertical timeline containing dots. It read like a pitch, a plan. The bottom dot of the timeline had a date of application specified next to it (April 8th, 2021). The middle of the timeline contained several dots representing the submitted PDFs supporting the case, as well as their relationship to the authority’s gaze: the authorities have seen them. The authorities have opened them. Reports and dates would become dots on the timeline. Activities with unclear or multiple dates of occurrence would not become dots on the timeline, like: The authorities are suspicious about your files, for they simply don’t make sense. Or: The authorities would like you to double-check the files you submitted and here, in this box, is where you should drop them should they be replaced. The top dot showed the verdict deadline in red: October 8th 2021.

Although I’ve heard of cases in which the waiting time was three to four months, the code-calculated and code-injected time is always exactly six months. I counted that many times on my fingers: May, June, July, August, September, October. The 8th. The code, however, does not automatically indicate or highlight potential delays,¹ which tells me that the authorities are pretty confident that six months is more than enough time to make a decision.

And there I embarked on my waiting journey, both digital and physical. To stay sane, I established a few rules for myself. I thought: “checking the webpage every day in the coming six months, would only increase the weight of anticipation. It’d kill my focus on anything else.” Then I asked myself: “what if I get the residence approved before the decision deadline?” The government would inform me by letter, in which case I wouldn’t miss out on this information.

In the end, I decided to not check the website for the first three months of waiting and distract myself the best I could. But then I stumbled. “what are my options really?”, I wondered, and gazed into the abyss. The biggest disadvantage of applying for a document is that it automatically turns you into a surveilled body. My behavior was to be analyzed through the data the authorities had full access to, like banking and travelling. Not only could they observe my financial and geographical decisions, but they were also looking for patterns that would prove that I was already performing as the permanent resident I applied to become. That is, that my status is maintained after submitting an application, aka that I’m still making the money I said I was making, and that I’m not committing the crimes I said I never committed. So the only option, really, was to work and earn at least the minimum income (around 1,500 euros per month). As a cultural worker, I had to work a lot.

I would lie if I said that the conditions to become a permanent resident above were screaming loud in the back of my head during those three months of not logging in. They weren’t. The months were filled with confidence that I’d get the residence permit. Most importantly, I felt proud of being able to resist the lure of the website.

After three months I rewarded myself with a login session. There was an update on my portal saying that the officials have opened the documents and are now in the process of coming up with a decision. Logging in once a week soon became twice a week. That’s when I started doubting whether I actually remember committing a crime. All there was to my user experience was re-reading the same one-sentence notification, sometimes translating it with Google Translate, then Deepl, just to make sure I got the terminology right.

By the time I entered the fifth month of waiting, I was logging in twice a day. I knew that these decisions take time, but why would the officials take so long after opening the documents? “Having applied for and received self-employed benefits from the government during the pandemic, while still making the minimum income, is the biggest crime”, I thought to myself.

Month six had passed and my hair turned grey. My new distraction was looking into other life options, such as wondering which friend would marry me, as well as scheming whether I should ask them before or after I receive a letter of rejection. Leaving the Netherlands was not one of them.

One day, in the seventh month of waiting, a visual update was upon me. Next to the Application is still being processed box, a More info button appeared. I was hopeful that clicking it would reveal why the officials were taking so damn long. Did they receive an overwhelming amount of applications during the pandemic? Anything, to help me stop logging in like there’s no tomorrow.

Clicking this magical button opened a pop-up window that said:

Has the decision period for your application not yet expired?
Then your application is still being processed. We cannot give you further information in that case.

I sighed, once again learning the same lesson, namely, that I should never expect more than the abundant and unnecessary user friendliness from the design of institutional websites. But the climax of my user experience was reached when I noticed a yet another button underneath the two sentences saying: Ik snap het, which in Dutch means I understand, I get it. I remember it being a rectangular, deep purple button, channeling serene vibes. Nothing like your average X or close button where the color changes while you hover with your cursor. This one was not reacting to any user movement and seemed comfortably grounded at the bottom of the pop-up window.

Clicking to understand closed the window that contained more questionably useful information. An agreement between the government and the user (citizen, applicant?) was made. Right at that click is where my faded interest in institutional web design was sparked again. Where does this gem of a button come from?

In The Software Arts, Warren Sack explains that: “digital life is everyday life in a society that enacts a digital ideology by replacing everyday institutions (e.g., the mail system, the cinema banking, etc.) with technologies that incorporate computers in a manner that makes them indispensable.” To understand the meaning of the button, I imagine myself going to the Immigration Center in the Netherlands to get informed about the status of my application. Let’s say it’s one day after the decision deadline, the 9th of October. I walk towards the counter and tell the worker what I’m here for. They immediately ask me if I am aware that I can check the status of my application online, so I pretend that I’m going through a digital detox until the wait is over. They understand and ask for my citizen number. Now, they’re looking at my application. The sound of their clicks tells me that they’ve clicked the More info button and are now reading the information in the pop-up window. They turn back to me gently, and tell me that my application is still being processed. I don’t hear any more clicks. My face clearly tells that I have an obvious follow-up question: “How much longer do I have to wait?” I know that they don’t have an answer for me, but deep down I’m hoping they’d reveal some insight about how long it took for the applicants who applied before me. “It’s busier than usual”, they say. I should not doubt this. “I understand”, I reply. The assistant looks back at the screen and clicks the button for me. The user experience ends there. Our conversation ends there. Have I discovered the origins of the button’s web design?

In her book Programmed Visions, Wendy Chun argues that the translation from analog to digital is at odds with actual operations of computation and claims that computers are anything but transparent. The computer computes – it doesn’t only reveal what it renders digital/transparent. Computers read and write without us, users, and because of that they become more unreadable by the users. They offer us more to read and more to see, therefore taking our attention away from the computer computing the things that it computes, like calculating the time it will take to decide on my case. As computers become flatter and more distant from the user, the density and opacity of their computation increases. It is safe to replace the word “computer” with “web design” here, in order to see the similarities in the way they operate. Web design is a visual representation of the software that the server is running. I can’t tell if I should think of the button as contributing to the government’s wish to be perceived as transparent by encouraging me to simply understand that they have no more information for me, or their inability to hide the fact that they do have more information and that a button like this one will only make me more curious about what’s actually going on. Was it them who decided that this button will be the one to end my user experience? And in that end, am I supposed to stop being curious? 

What if, instead of an I Understand button, there was the X button? Apart from not wanting to see the window anymore, I probably wouldn’t desire to not click it as much. If clicking the I Understand button results in an agreement with the officials, as well as peacefully accepting their continuous analysis of my banking data, I’d rather have to click the X button.

What if, instead of an I Understand button, there was a like button, a ♡? If I could just like the fact that my application is still being processed, perhaps I’d cope with the lack of information better. My like would notify the officials that I’m in front of my screen and, of all the websites in the world, I’m watching what they’re doing on theirs. I’m watching them being late. In reality, I don’t necessarily like the view, but I want them to think that I do. By pressing that like button, I want them to think that I’m cheerleading for their next move, not that I want something from them. This is what reverse surveillance would look like.

The I understand button is not as flexible as the previous two. It only makes sense in the context in which it is positioned, so the pop-up window and the website’s purpose. Its presence compensates for the lack of information and is a palliative for disagreement or complaint. If there’s anything it wants to extract from the user, it is their silence. It kindly persuades the user to find other ways of anticipating the authoritative decision, as opposed to clicking it until the information changes.

Warren Sack and many other peers argue that we still live in an era where interfaces translate analog processes of communication exactly/literally and with no information lost or added, into software. Were we to look at the computer as a rhetorical device, the button would be perceived as a form of persuasion coming from the authority’s end and the case would be closed. But to see the bright side of the I understand button, I encourage looking at the computer as grammar. “Grammar concerns the rules of language. Grammar rules have long been considered by some to be machines.” Warren Sack further argues that a translation of a language (spoken or written) into a programming language is an exercise in loss, change, and addition. Translation is betrayal: always lossy.

Unlike other button designs used in social media platforms, the I understand button doesn’t push you towards the middle of a clickbait. It ends the user experience like no other button does. Being persuasive and lost in translation at the same time, it reflects the authority’s desire for a perfect language and the temporality of such desire. That’s because its life, too, has an end. A change in the window’s information may very well cause the button’s disappearance. What would come in place of an I Understand button?

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Other Worlds is a shapeshifting journal for design research, criticism and transformation. Other Worlds (OW) aims at making the social, political, cultural and technical complexities surrounding design practices legible and, thus, mutable.

OW hosts articles, interviews, short essays and all the cultural production that doesn’t fit neither the fast-paced, volatile design media promotional machine nor the necessarily slow and lengthy process of scholarly publishing. In this way, we hope to address urgent issues, without sacrificing rigour and depth.

OW is maintained by the Center for Other Worlds (COW), at Lusófona University, Portugal. COW focuses on the development of perspectives that aren’t dominant nor imposed by the design discipline, through criticism, speculation and collaboration with various disciplines such as curating, architecture, visual arts, ecology and political theory, having in design an unifying element but rejecting hierarchies between them.

Editorial Board: Silvio Lorusso (editor), Francisco Laranjo, Bianca Elzenbaumer, Luís Alegre, Rita Carvalho, Patrícia Cativo, Hugo Barata

More information can be found here.