91–100 of 213 posts
I had to disable Adblock Plus for some reason to get the entire page to load. Ditto on the point where Japan is stuck in the 1980s future. Everything's optimized for tiny cellphone screens optimized for text. If I recall correctly iPhone adoption was slow, and many people lacked a desktop to provide updates. I still find wifi to be incredibly scarce in Tokyo. If people want a desktop, they go to a cafe. If they want…
I am pretty sure you could write the same article with the roles reversed. That in itself does of course not take away from the article, but I am catching some negative undertones how Japan is "behind" or "unable to change" because of their society. I guess you could even open the bottomless barell of a discussion about racism, but my point is just this: Seeing "them" as "behind" is a bad way to think about it and pr…
> Seeing "them" as "behind" is a bad way to think about it and prevents true understanding. So I guess still using Fax Machines to do business in 2020 is not "behind", it's just "different" right? Let's call a cat a cat when we see one.
One example of a "web 2.0" era site (and it needs JS to work, so you know it's modern): https://maidragon.jp/2nd/ Flashy intro, bold non-box outlines of content sections and non-straight (i.e. it's slanted) text, animated background, static background element. News link button has character to it, it's not just a with default browser styling nor with the standard bootstrap CSS and calling it a day. Clicking it goes to https://maidragon.jp/news/ which has a nice vertical column of main content, though again that so nostalgic (to me) slanted design shows at the top. Viewing the source (direct payload) you can actually read the HTML. It might be wordpress based?
For contrast one fully modern, including the "why does it need to be" part, is a site like https://sephira-su.fensi.plus/ Non-standard TLD, google translate doesn't even work -- I think because of shadow dom shenanigans. There's a dev blog about that site's tech that is readable with google translate though: https://cam-inc.co.jp/p/techblog/405653224037549201 (The dev blog and the company's home page itself is another modern site, it's even updated significantly since I saw it last in March, and they blog about other modern tech.) The backend of Fensi is microservices, content served in a "headless CMS" style, the front-end is built as a re-usable theme with web components (LitElement framework) making use of shadow dom...
In summary, there's plenty of modern web design going on in Japan, and just like here there's probably too much.
Regarding advertising, the article states: "Rather than being seen as a tool to enable people Japanese companies often see the web as just another advertising platform to push their message across as loudly as possible. Websites ends up being about the maximal concentration of information into the smallest space akin to a pamphlet rather than an interactive tool." I find this quite ironic, especially given how unusab…
> I think Japanese websites are better They are only better if you never use them.
Don't want to light a fire here but I'd like to note that there is inherently something about Japanese culture (or Asian culture for that matter) that inhibits software development growth. Everything in Asia screams of respect for elders. In this case, the elders are the old design patterns and the older programming languages. It's the thought of why do something when it's not broken? As we move forward globally, we…
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I don't think any technology has improved on the decades-old three-dial system for air control in a car.
You're not fan of thermostat controlled systems where you set a temperature you want and that's what it maintains? We have a Subaru with manual settings (3 dials) and a Volvo with a thermostat. The Volvo was set the day we bought it and I don't know that we've messed with it since. The Subaru, on the other hand, is always being adjusted. The Volvo one seems to be smart enough to know when hot or cold (dry) air is nee…
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/99/f0/d899f00fe8ae8cb22e6e...
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It's pretty disingenuous to pretend that those sites the kind of sites that are under discussion here.
Feel free to read the article, where those websites are linked as the examples being discussed. Absolutely hilarious comment though. > Go on a safari around some of Japan’s most popular sites and here’s what you can expect to find (see Goo, Rakuten, Yomiuri, NicoNico, OKWave, @cosme, and more): The links, in case you still don't want to read the article: - https://www.goo.ne.jp - https://www.rakuten.co.jp - https://w…
For the last 20 years there has been a steady stream of articles on how Japanese web design is "broken", or "behind", or "cluttered".
There is also a steady steam of UI experts arriving from the US telling Japanese companies they need to modernize their look and feel.
The thing is, e-commerce sites like Rakuten are already heavily A/B tested and optimized. That graphic experience is common because it is most effective. Any analysis that does not focus on actual, observed user behavior is simply navel-gazing.
That said, the ubiquity of iPhone and Android UI is causing a shift in Japanese UI/UX design. People are becoming used to that as the primary interface.
