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Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

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Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#51
One of these points is way off the mark. I'll add my own two cents.

Language Barrier - The web and most of the programming languages which drive it were designed by English speakers or western corporations and hence the majority of documentation and educational resources are also in English. Although much gets translated this still causes a delay in new technologies and trends being adopted.

1. Many of the Japanese coders I've met have put in the effort to learn English. They might not be able to carry fluent geopolitical conversations, but they do tend to have enough chops to read API docs and skim code. Most of the Japanese professionals I've met, in any trade, are ultra professional, and will do whatever it takes to stay on top of their craft, including learning English if needed.

2. It's easy to forget that some of these programming languages, notably Ruby, are actually from Japan. As recently as a few years ago, some of my favorite resources for Ruby were in Japanese, out in front of English.

3. Go to a Japanese bookstore and check out the section for programmers. More recent web languages/tech, like node.js, are not well represented. But then look to the next shelf and you'll see something like Unity stacked to the ceiling. It could be that Japanese coders would rather work on different kinds of projects, spend their time learning new tech in those domains instead of the web, and only see the web as a means to an end. I wouldn't consider this a "language barrier", but rather a difference in priorities.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#52

The anecdotal cultural 'explanations' here are a little ridiculous without some real data to reference. > Logographic-based languages... actually allow Japanese speakers to become comfortable with processing a lot of information in short period of time / space not true - article with references: http://persquaremile.com/2011/12/21/which-reads-faster-chine... > Japanese doesn’t have italics or capital letters which li…

While I agree with the vast majority of your criticisms, I wouldn't be surprised if you're underestimating the language barrier issue.

>Is the claim that the Japanese are technologically behind the rest of the world? Why would web development/design be different than almost every other technical industry?

Many programming languages are based on English and the Latin script. Programming, and more specifically web programming, requires a level of fluency with English and its alphabet that I would expect significantly decreases the available talent pool in non-Anglo countries, especially countries with different writing systems[1].

No other technologies lean so heavily a specific language. Math and science are universal and independent of any language. Computer science is universal. Computer programming is not.

[1]Comparing a country like Vietnam (that uses a Latin script) to another equivalent Asian country might be interesting.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#53

One of these points is way off the mark. I'll add my own two cents. Language Barrier - The web and most of the programming languages which drive it were designed by English speakers or western corporations and hence the majority of documentation and educational resources are also in English. Although much gets translated this still causes a delay in new technologies and trends being adopted. 1. Many of the Japanese c…

>Many of the Japanese coders I've met have put in the effort to learn English.

I put a longer response addressing this point in a different thread, but you're interacting with the cohort that has already chosen to be a computer programmer. It's a biased sample group. I would expect people with no interest in learning English would be disinclined to even enter programming.

(This is still tertiary to actual cultural preferences in web design, mind you.)

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#54
post #33

There's actually some truth to this that is missing in the article. I had lived in China for awhile and it was so incredibly difficult to navigate Chinese websites. I'm using China as an example because the web designs are similar. There was some study done awhile ago within China that I can't find the link to that compared the designs of a complicated site like sina.com.cn with text and images all over the place and…

Would you mind linking to that graphic?

http://qing.blog.sina.com.cn/tj/539f69f5330027uu.html

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#56

I think it is also hard to be aware that you are in a trend when you are living it. Many of the things that pass as "clean design" at the moment are just a trend, and I promise you that they will look dated soon. This always happens. It happened with 80s hair, with 90s androgyny and it will happen again big text, extreme minimalist, big poetic photo backgrounds and so on.

I'm half convinced that we're seeing the result of a brilliant conspiracy by Getty Images, Shutterstock and Corbis to infiltrate the design landscape of Silicon Valley and sell more stock photography. Also: the Golden Gate needs a better agent. Given how many times that bridge has appeared in photo backdrops, it should be rich enough by now to stretch further into Marin.

Apparently the CEO of Shutterstock is NYC's first tech billionaire: http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwindurgy/2013/06/28/oh-snap-sh...

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#57
post #53

One of these points is way off the mark. I'll add my own two cents. Language Barrier - The web and most of the programming languages which drive it were designed by English speakers or western corporations and hence the majority of documentation and educational resources are also in English. Although much gets translated this still causes a delay in new technologies and trends being adopted. 1. Many of the Japanese c…

> Many of the Japanese coders I've met have put in the effort to learn English. I put a longer response addressing this point in a different thread, but you're interacting with the cohort that has already chosen to be a computer programmer . It's a biased sample group. I would expect people with no interest in learning English would be disinclined to even enter programming. (This is still tertiary to actual cultural…

Negative. One of the best Japanese coders I know runs his own property management business, and learned coding (and English) so he can stay on top of the various stuff he's created in support of his operations.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#58

One of these points is way off the mark. I'll add my own two cents. Language Barrier - The web and most of the programming languages which drive it were designed by English speakers or western corporations and hence the majority of documentation and educational resources are also in English. Although much gets translated this still causes a delay in new technologies and trends being adopted. 1. Many of the Japanese c…

Your last point is dead-on, and I think it's not just true for Japan but also for Germany and Russia. People from these countries tend to approach technology from a much more hardware or math centric view. The interest in UI stuff is nowhere as great as in the US and it doesn't garner the same level of reputation.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#60

Ok, there's some truth to this article, I'm not going to say the author is all wrong, but look at Amazon.com's home page and imagine you couldn't read English. http://cl.ly/image/2i0r0G091U0P It would look really jumbled, incoherent, and poorly architected. Given that you can speak English, it's relatively easy to digest the nav, suggested books, ads, etc. My guess is that there are cultural expectations driving thei…

Not a good example. Amazon.com is famously a jumbled mess.

It's an excellent example; it's directly comparable with the Japanese sites which are also big legacy companies with a lot of content competing for attention. It's not as if Amazon is an outlier in design terms amongst major Western ecommerce or portal sites. Most Yahoo regional sites look a bit like the Japanese one, although some got round to updating the logo quicker. The US top sites list boasts portals that are even more text-heavy ike Reddit (and of course the infamous Craigslist) or noisy like the Huffington Post

Japanese startups, on the other hand, appear to enjoy their SV-style big stock photos, large bold text and colourful calls to action: http://thebridge.jp/en/2013/06/top-50-japanese-startups

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