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Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

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Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#161

Post by brabel »

squarefoot wrote: post #62

I believe it's not just a Japanese thing but Asian in general, but I fail to understand the reasons. Some 16 years ago at a company I worked with we were testing some mini industrial PC and embedded boards for a project, so we had to download lots of documentation from the manufacturers site which was located in Taiwan. Those weren't home or business PC boards, their site target audience would be mostly engineers and…

The reason why people from a certain region like a certain kind of aesthetics?

Well, why do people have cultures might be the same question.

Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#162

Post by tgv »

eloisius wrote: post #140
timoth3y wrote: post #100

I started my first tech startup in Japan in 1998 and have built several since them. 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…

I don’t understand the aversion to information density that designers have. In my experience, old school server-rendered sites tended to be jam packed with more information and richer tooling than most of the SPA-type sites you interact with these days. They might be “ugly” from some bauhaus art school designer’s standard but I’d way rather use an old school but feature rich interface like eBay than the sleek-looking…

I think (but I'm also someone who likes more densely packed interfaces) that it boils down to "discoverability" and friends: a sparse interface with a few well chosen controls can be easier to explore and navigate, precisely because there is less information. So on the one hand it eases the task of the user (cognitive load, if you want), and on the other it forces the builder to prioritize.

If that leads to difficulties for complex and infrequent tasks, it's only a disadvantage for the more technically oriented user.

Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#164

Post by morelisp »

appleiigs wrote: post #13

The crammed design is also seen in their electronics and other household items. Things that seemingly that have 1 function such as rice cookers and toilets are jam packed with buttons, lights and beeping. I also avoided Toyotas because of the crammed dashboard/consoles and all the beeping. Unlock door, closing hatch door, starting the car is just beep, beep, beep. Instead of toggles like BMW, they would have an indiv…

> Things that seemingly that have 1 function... are jam packed with buttons

    $ ls --help | grep '^ *-' | wc -l
    59

Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#165

Post by AniseAbyss »

grenoire wrote: post #4

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…

Every once in a while I browse the internet without an adblocker and I wonder how people can live like this.

Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#167

Post by enz »

andi999 wrote: post #166
enz wrote: post #163

When I was living in Tokyo, I asked Japanese people why their design was the way it is and if they liked it. Answer I got: "I don't know. I don't like that, personally".

Maybe because of tradition?

I think. Maybe some "We always did it this way, so we'll continue" thinking. (I think it's very Japanese)

Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#168

Post by hrktb »

captainmuon wrote: post #147
timoth3y wrote: post #100

I started my first tech startup in Japan in 1998 and have built several since them. 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…

If you rely too much on A/B testing it is easy though to get stuck in a local minimum defined by users' expectations... Or to build a site that generates a lot of revenue but that's not optimal for users, and when a competitor breaks out of the local minimum by changing the paradigm, all the users go there.

This is true in general, but in this specific case looking at the biggest online marketplaces (e.g. amazon, aliexpress, ...) they come from completely different places and have converged to the same kind of conclusion.

There might be other paradigms looming out there, but the current situation is not just people lazily relying on A/B testing.

Re: Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

#169

Post by ZWoz »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #145
oxford_comma wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is where I consider myself a segregationist. Give them their web: Facebook, YouTube, Google, et al. -- leave me out of normie net.

You needn't join in. You are free to segregate yourself.

Are they? You still are in same infrastructure and legal framework. Thats like saying you are free not visiting neighbouring apartments. Their "influence" (smoke, noise) is still leaking to your space. Same with web. Like facebook negatively affecting separated web forums.
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