The EU as Frictionless UX

[This essay is a collaboration with Rhiannon Le Parmentier, who holds citizenship, and legal degrees, in the UK and US.]

A good user experience is made up of a lot of small, well-considered product decisions. Ideally, you want to make a product that so naturally does what the user expects, that guides the user to the right way of using your product, that the user doesn’t even notice it.

The “right way of using” your product is invisible. You can’t see it. The UX is frictionless. The iPad is a good example, as you can see in all those videos of three-year-olds picking it up and figuring out how to use it on their own.

In political philosophy, frictionless UX is also an ideal. We’ve all been to the DMV and filled out taxes in April - it’s an ideal, not a reality. Still, “that government is best which governs least,” said apocryphal Thomas Jefferson, and Lao Tzu said basically the same thing.

In Europe, the EU fulfills that ideal in many ways - in a lot of ways it doesn’t, we’ll agree, but in many ways it does. The best things governments do are the things which we tend to notice the least. Which is as it should be, but if we forget all the small, labor-intensive decisions that went to make up this invisible user experience, we won’t give credit where it’s due.

Like, you know, the Leave campaign. So here are some great pain points the EU used to solve for us.

When you travel across Europe, there are no checkpoints. Travel to France from Britain, and just like a car trip across the United States, you can see the national borders on the map and by road signs, but otherwise they don’t really exist.

Can you imagine moving across country if you had to check in at every state border? Living in the United States psychologically would be totally different.

Here in the United States, we complain a lot about the overweening reach of the federal government (and for good reason), but the Founders did give interstate commerce to the federal government. Why? For one thing, it’s hard to get states to cooperate to pass laws that benefit everyone.

Which brings us to the boring-sounding but crucial issue of consumer rights. For instance, making a phone call home from France used to cost an arm and a leg. That’s a huge burden on the individual consumer, but there’s nothing you as an individual can do about it, and just as bad, the telephone companies aren’t going to call some international conference and agree to a cross-European rate. It’s just not going to happen. It’s too hard to coordinate.

But no one has to worry about that today. That’s the specific job of the group of delegated negotiators from each European member state, and that’s what they did. Quietly, without fanfare, those damn faceless bureacrats sorted it out. As our government told them to do.

In the EU, two corporations in two different nation-states think absolutely nothing of merging or acquiring each other. If you’re a business in the US trying to work with, let alone merge with, a business in Brazil, you’d better lawyer up, because now you have multiple sets of trade laws, import-export laws, and labor regulations to figure out and comply with.

And if you’re a business in the US and you want to sell to a Chinese firm, the Department of State is definitely going to be interested. It’s a matter of national policy if you’re big enough.

Two European companies are already in legal sync, have no foreeing policy issues to worry about, and have a legal right to do so. You don’t even think about it.

The Erasmus programme is a flagship educational initiative, but far more common are the year abroad and the work abroad schemes. In the United States, universiites also form special relationships with foreign universities so their students can travel.

But the university also has to set up visas; if a foreign student visits the United States, they often have to pass a background check. In the EU, the student just hops on a plane. There’s no issue.

At the same time the EU tears down barriers to individuals pursuing opportunities wherever in Europe they may be found, the EU also tries to protect local customs.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration makes sure that any bottled water you drink is not literally poisonous, that your spinach doens’t have botulism or whatever, and so on. The EU does the same thing, but also ensures that food with proper names, um, comes from the place with that name. It’s another level of quality control.

Cornish pasties (they look like empañadas) come from Cornwall, England. Cheddar cheese comes from Cheddar, England. Champagne comes from Champagne, France. Scotch whiskey comes from Scotland. You don’t have to look closely at your “cheese products.” It’s just real cheddar, from Cheddar.

Last, science. Modern science is inherently global and international. Deep learning, as we know, was developed largely in Canada. CRISPR was invented by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, French and American. And that’s always been the scientific dream, ever since Newton and Leibniz and a bunch of other old white dudes started mailing each other about their discoveries.

In the United States, international collaborations are pretty normal too, but with some exceptions. The US government tried to block mathematical research into cryptography. And foreign students routinely face huge hassles remaining to collaborate for longer periods of time.

The EU eliminates all those barriers to scientific collaboration and productvity. Of course you can live and research and share findings in another country. Of course.

And then the EU goes one better. Scientists always need grants and funding to do their research; it’s a huge part of any working scientist’s life. Well, in the EU, governemnts can’t discriminate against a team because they include a foreign member. France gives equal consideration to a British-French team as to a French-French team, and Britain does the same for British-British and British-Italian teams.

Next up, healthcare. If you get sick on your holiday in Europe, you don’t need to worry about paying for the hospital. If you need to go to A&E, or ER as they say in the States, the EU has hammered out agreements for your country to reimburse your holiday country.

That’s a massive barrier to travel for many people; US citizens often buy travel insurance, because otherwise if they get sick abroad, they have no way of getting home to get medical care.

Traveling in the EU lets you have the thrill of the foreign, but without getting visas, going through border inspections, worrying about food quality, or finding medical care.

Budget flights are another thing the EU gave us (actually I just remembered this one). When I came to live in the United States, I was shocked at how expensive the budget flights were, just within the United States. They’re nearly twice the price of a flight from Heathrow to Italy or Spain.

In the 1990s, the EU forced airline deregulation. Freed of the burden of multiple regulations, flight prices dropped. And you and I can pop over to Greece on holiday.

[ed: flights across Europe can be had for $20-$50, while flights within the United States cost $100-$500. As a result the British often take vacations in Greece].

Good riddance, EU. What did you ever do for us, but ensure food safety, honesty in food origin, medical care, painless and affordable travel, free study and work abroad, medical care while traveling, and international scientific collaboration?