The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022) • Hacker News Board

Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)

#121

Post by rolymath » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

carlosjobim wrote: post #74

rolymath wrote: post #10

I think the answer is more obvious: The average Japanese web designer doesn't assume his user is an idiot, while western design is more condescending

A potential customer who is a non-idiot will be able to work around idiotic business practices, while a potential customer who is an idiot won't be able to work around good business practices. Hence, you grab more customers by catering to idiots. Unless you as a business want to avoid these clients.

Disagree.

Idiot design means more steps for non idiots (see: terminal vs GUI)

Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)

#122

Post by carlosjobim » Wed, Feb 25, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

rolymath wrote: post #121

carlosjobim wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A potential customer who is a non-idiot will be able to work around idiotic business practices, while a potential customer who is an idiot won't be able to work around good business practices. Hence, you grab more customers by catering to idiots. Unless you as a business want to avoid these clients.

Disagree. Idiot design means more steps for non idiots (see: terminal vs GUI)

And how many consumers purchase terminal apps vs GUI apps?

Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)

#123

Post by bigstrat2003 » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 7:21 AM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #40

usui wrote: post #22

I read this piece when it came out in 2022. Maybe it should be marked with "(2022)". Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33745146 I just want to add that in addition to peculiar web design, Japanese websites have a way of assuming architectures or usage patterns where servers need to sleep or do some kind of scheduled job, which is really weird for people used to sites that need to account for a…

Anyone who has attempted to play Final Fantasy XIV beyond the free trial has experienced this. Their subscription management web app is so incredibly bad it takes a significant amount of time and effort just to purchase a subscription. I wonder how much revenue they lose simply from people giving up.

Let me tell you, as bad as the FF14 subscription process is, it's nothing compared to what they had for FF11 back in the day. We have it good!

Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)

#124

Post by mbo » Thu, Feb 26, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

adzm wrote: post #104

mbo wrote: post #68

I have a little theory that a thing that makes Japanese website feel Japanese is their choice of typeface, which will almost always be something with robust CJK character support. This typeface is preserved when Chrome auto-translates the site. But fonts with good CJK support have wider Latin letter-forms, even when not in `font-variant-east-asian: 'full-width'` mode. I write about this here: https://maxbo.me/subordi…

Is there a reason why several typefaces on your site appear to be hello Kitty glyphs?

That's the fallback font when the font that is requested is not available locally (and the license doesn't permit them to be redistributed). I wanted it to be visually obvious.