Why Japanese web design is so different (2013)

Post by julianlam » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #136

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…

I take it you've never used a Japanese rice cooker? They have far more than one function -- aside from making steamed rice, you can make rice porridge, congee, steam other foods, and some can even be used to bake cakes. Not to mention you can time-delay the cooking to specify when you want the rice to be ready (which means it also has a clock). These are just the features my middle-of-the-road rice cooker can do -- m…

Post by Bayart » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #168

captainmuon wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by danielscrubs » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 3:07 PM UTC

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…

Post by innocenat » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

julianlam wrote: post #181

cyphar wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you've never used a Japanese rice cooker? They have far more than one function -- aside from making steamed rice, you can make rice porridge, congee, steam other foods, and some can even be used to bake cakes. Not to mention you can time-delay the cooking to specify when you want the rice to be ready (which means it also has a clock). These are just the features my middle-of-the-road rice cooker can do -- m…

I have an orthogonal approach to rice cookers. I find that the extra features are pointless and were added purely to differentiate themselves from competitors (or even between models themselves). Of the people I know who use rice cookers, they all use it to make rice, but usage of the other features drops significantly afterwards. After all, do you feel like using your rice cooker to make oatmeal? My ideal rice cooke…

Post by dibujaron » Sat, Nov 21, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #186

julianlam wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same kind of conclusion? Amazon and AliExpress have wildly different design philosophies. One has pointless, hard to use coupons and mini games, and the other is Amazon. I use AliExpress _in spite of_ their UI, not because of it.

Aren’t both at the same level ? Amazon is horrible in many many ways. You’d think a bookstore would have a good way to show books of the same series in order, and make it easy to find any specific issue. Or help you follow random authors, and not just some handpicked ones, or notify you of a new book coming out in the future. All of these use cases are mildly (wildly) broken and it was the core of their business for…