Here’s the YT video if anyone is interested:
The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
41–50 of 124 posts
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#42Makes me think that mass analysis of archive.org websites (on a much larger scale than 2000 sites) for color distribution from screenshots or other stuff like this is a cool project ripe for picking.
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#43Having lived in Japan it feels they either they go all in on minimalist or maximalist. Some stores are quiet, others are obnoxiously loud and brightly lit to where you don't see your own shadow. Some magazines have a ridiculous amount of text on the cover, distorting the characters to fit with bold text stroking, others especially fashion might have one line if any at all alongside their logo. Game and book covers can be more on artistic/subtle side whereas in the west we often fight for your attention with character collages or action scenes.
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#44I think to figure out if it's a cultural difference or unwillingness for technological change, it'd be interesting to compare Korean or better yet Chinese apps, which were designed more recently.
In my brief experience,
- Promotional websites (e.g. https://ant.design/index-cn, https://seed.bytedance.com/zh/seedream4_0) seem to be designed similarly to Western websites
- Chinese mobile apps do seem to be more colorful in general (as observed with Japanese websites in the article), and some are more information dense, like Douyin Shop and Live. Bullet comments also add to the density
- I briefly worked at TikTok US, where the company uses Lark Suite. The desktop and mobile interfaces look pretty similar to Notion/Slack, but it has more vibrant colors and slightly more features (being an everything app for the workspace)
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sooner three-dot and hamburger menus fall out of favor the better. They're a couple of those UI patterns where 8-9 times out of 10 there was probably a more suitable pattern that should've been used instead.
I agree that they’re bad patterns (the three dot menu particularly so, it often just looks like a mistake), but what would be more functional on a small screen? I’d love to see some good alternatives that I could adopt in my own projects.
It's very context-dependent and I can't detail all of them in this post but I'll give a couple examples.
In many cases, for mobile versions of sites hamburger menus can be easily replaced with an app-style bottom-aligned tab bar and on occasion even a linear horizontal navbar. You wouldn't believe how many mobile hamburger menus I've seen on sites that have a grand total of 2-5 destinations.
In the case of list views, three-dot menus can be replaced by a mini-toolbar of buttons that appears within a list item when hovering or selecting a row (depending on if it's desktop or mobile), and on desktop if your audience has a bit of a technical leaning a right-click context menu can do the trick.
The main thing to avoid is to use either as thoughtless catch-all "junk drawers". Usually if one sits and thinks about it a little bit a better pattern will become obvious.
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#46I 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…
I found this out when buying a Japan Rail Pass for a trip a few years ago, blew my mind. https://www.japanrailpass-reservation.net/ only works 4:00–23:30 Japan time.
This is especially funny since the JR Pass cannot be purchased by residents of Japan.
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#47Are westerners entering a period of “minimalism fatigue”? Anecdotally it seems like color and texture are slowly taking hold in designs, especially in works targeting a younger demographic. Example: liquid glass, anything published by Taco Bell, the meme of making sites look like they came from Geocities in 99, etc...
I know I certainly am. I hope we move towards things having colors other than white and black again. Please give me back grey backgrounds, I don't like the blinding whites everything has but dark mode is horrid when you aren't in a dark-ish environment
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found this out when buying a Japan Rail Pass for a trip a few years ago, blew my mind. https://www.japanrailpass-reservation.net/ only works 4:00–23:30 Japan time.
Yeah this is probably downstream of the fact that if you visit any of the individual JR sites from the expandable map at the bottom, you'll discover they're all down at this time as well. Let's scrap the website and make a staffed phone line or fax machine with operating hours.
Considering the state of japanese IT, there is probably a person typing each reservation from the website into a 1980s mainframe.
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#49Are westerners entering a period of “minimalism fatigue”? Anecdotally it seems like color and texture are slowly taking hold in designs, especially in works targeting a younger demographic. Example: liquid glass, anything published by Taco Bell, the meme of making sites look like they came from Geocities in 99, etc...
I hope so. I never bought into the minimalism/flat design hype and have lamented its loss ever since.
What’s worse is it bled out of the digital world and into the physical. There’s a real lack of color in our modern world, at least over here in the US. Everything is so neutral and boring, all in the name of efficiency.
Re: The peculiar case of Japanese web design (2022)
#50Are westerners entering a period of “minimalism fatigue”? Anecdotally it seems like color and texture are slowly taking hold in designs, especially in works targeting a younger demographic. Example: liquid glass, anything published by Taco Bell, the meme of making sites look like they came from Geocities in 99, etc...
Hopefully. Everyone copied Apple without pausing to consider; "hey, does this make things _less_ usable?". Hint: yes, yes it does.