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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)

#111

Post by wisty »

Japanese just naturally has a smaller natural column-width due to the density.

Everything gets broken into smaller chunks, and those chunks get put into small columns. The pictures are small because a big picture will throw things off.

I'm not sure, but I think Japanese people (and Asians in general) have very different rules for negative space - they either don't use it at all (and pack the design like blocks of tofu) or will use it in a very intentional way. It's rarer (as far as I can tell) for negative space to just relaxing filler, it's more a bold statement similar to an attention-grabbing graphic.

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

#112

Post by larkeith »

criddell wrote: post #87
SamBam wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personally, I much prefer the manual ones, where I can trivially tweak the settings without having to think about it or look away from the road. But that's in part because I usually have the windows down, so constant adjustment is needed to compensate for speed, outside temp, wind speed/direction, etc. - at this point, changing it is second nature. With a touchscreen, even if I could get used to the lack of tactile feedback, it's impossible to know if the right screen is up without looking away from the road (the same issue arises with radio settings).

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

#113

Post by brigandish »

ekianjo wrote: post #69
blackbrokkoli wrote: post #48

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.

I see you’re being downvoted but as someone who lives in Japan and had the misfortune to agree to doing a survey this week on tourism which entailed my looking at around 57 tourist websites that made me viscerally angry at how bad they were, I can say you’re right on the money. To say so is not racism or any such thing other than the ability to correctly describe a situation.

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

#114

Post by dheera »

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…

For that matter Amazon and eBay are both pretty goddamn cluttered to. As long as you're comparing e-commerce sites there isn't that much difference.

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

#115

Post by bluepizza »

brigandish wrote: post #113
ekianjo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I see you’re being downvoted but as someone who lives in Japan and had the misfortune to agree to doing a survey this week on tourism which entailed my looking at around 57 tourist websites that made me viscerally angry at how bad they were, I can say you’re right on the money. To say so is not racism or any such thing other than the ability to correctly describe a situation.

Stating the differences, especially the poor quality of the websites is normal. There’s a bunch of terrible web developers here, and they get paid to make terrible websites.

The racism starts whenever a foreigner starts explaining Japanese culture, and they will usually incorporate some old fashioned Japanese nationalism.

Japanese people are just people. There is nothing inherent to our culture, genetics, or soil that makes us like bad websites. We just have plenty of bad web designers.

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

#116

Post by dheera »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #48

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…

I think they're comparing apples to oranges.

If you're looking at Rakuten then compare it to Amazon and eBay which are also pretty cluttered but functional.

If you're looking at Yomiuri then compare it to New York Times or CNN or Fox News all of which are pretty cluttered but functional.

That minimalist "clean" look isn't a general trend of e-commerce and news sites even in the US, if that is what they are using as a reference point.

Japan has no shortage of modern web design either. You just have to be looking in the right places, e.g.

This temple https://www.kiyomizudera.or.jp/

This Michelin restaurant http://akiyamashirokane.com/

Mazda https://www.mazda.co.jp/

This tea house https://www.fukuda-chaya.jp/

This startup https://www.kudan.io/jp/

This web design dude https://kuon.space/

This startup accelerator https://www.j-startup.go.jp/

This website about traditional Japanese colors https://nipponcolors.com/

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

#117

Post by innocenat »

1123581321 wrote: post #102
userbinator wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 dials, with one being the temperature, one being the fan speed, and one more for the modes: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d8/99/f0/d899f00fe8ae8cb22e6e...

They're aware; they're saying that targeted temperature is a simpler control that obviates the need to try to manually tune the fan, used vents and degree of heat.

But fan speed is different than temperature?

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

#118

Post by howlgarnish »

busfahrer wrote: post #3
_5659 wrote: post #2

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 believe the reason for slow iPhone adoption was that they already had i-mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-mode

The primary reason for slow iPhone adoption in Japan was that both NTT Docomo and au/KDDI, the largest carriers, initially refused to stock it. (Japan has a strange model where the telcos basically control what handsets can be sold.) SoftBank was the first to start selling it, and this propelled them from being a bit player into a top-tier telco.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N2cMeNoQcjk/XGGrX-OBnbI/AAAAAAAAW...

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

#119

Post by howlgarnish »

rangibaby wrote: post #104
_5659 wrote: post #2

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…

> If I recall correctly iPhone adoption was slow No way. It's hard to exaggerate what a smash hit the iPhone was in Japan. It immediately changed the mobile landscape, and continues to have an outsized market share: ~57% compared to 45% in the US

Yes, once it was available, but dominant players NTT Docomo and KDDI refused to sell it for years. It was SoftBank who took a punt, and it paid off big time.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/29/15892640/iphone-anniversa...

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

#120

Post by howlgarnish »

cpeterso wrote: post #61

Picking a random example, the google.com home pages for English and Japanese are not very different: https://www.google.com/?hl=en https://www.google.com/?hl=ja They're almost identical except the English page includes links to Google Store and information about "Carbon neutral since 2007". The English page's "About" link is in the upper left corner of the page. The Japanese page's "About" link is in the page footer.

Google is an American company and the Google home page is pretty much the same in any language.
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