Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

randomwire.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#71

Post by resetmp »

verisimilidude wrote: post #57
pflats wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's one arbitrary example. It's meaningless if he represents 1 out of a 10000 sample size.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#73

Post by blah32497 »

pflats wrote: post #52
CognitiveLens wrote: post #13

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 pro…

I would expand this to include the sciences. I did a 2 month industry internship in Japan a few years ago and I was blown away by the effects of the language barrier. They are incredibly disconnected from the rest of the world. While the rest of the world is publishing their results in English, they are publishing in their own Japanese trade journals. It's kind of ironic, b/c in a less developed country (China), or a less populous country (European countries) you wouldn't have the local base to support the publishing of local language journals and technical books. So they're victims of their own success.

Sure they can go read an IEEE article, but 9/10 times they'll go to a Japanese source b/c it's so much easier for them.

For programming it's probably only worse. I imagine there is a Japanese equivalent to Stack Exchange, but it will have a tiny fraction of the help you get on the English language one. It's probably like programming in the 90s! =)

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#74

Post by grmarcil »

To disagree with one of the smaller points in the article: Uniqlo's website is not a great counterpoint to the trend of bad/outdated web design. I like their clothing, but their website (although modern looking) is one of the worst user experiences out there.

Search is an afterthought, and if you want to get to something at the bottom of a category page, have fun wading through several dynamic sub-category load times.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#75

Post by Someone »

verisimilidude wrote: post #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 c…

"Language Barrier [...] Many of the Japanese coders I've met have put in the effort to learn English."

If they have to put in an effort, there _is_ a barrier. Compare that with parts of Europe, where the first words kids learn to read are "OK", "Cancel", "Yes", "No", and "Level". And that's only a slight exaggeration. That's a barrier, too, but a lower one.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#76

Post by verisimilidude »

resetmp wrote: post #71
verisimilidude wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's one arbitrary example. It's meaningless if he represents 1 out of a 10000 sample size.

It's anecdotal, but dispels the idea that my "sample group" was limited to career programmers, which was the point in the parent comment.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#77

Post by joeyo »

pyre wrote: post #37
DanI-S wrote: post #26

> "Walking around Tokyo, I often get the feeling of being stuck in a 1980′s vision of the future" I'm British, living in the US, and I've always felt this way about America. I recently heard from an American friend that he felt exactly the same when visiting Britain. Not sure what to make of it, but it's interesting!

If you average all of those feelings out, then does it mean that we really are living in a 1980's version of the future?

Indeed: The 19A0's.

http://boingboing.net/2011/10/11/mixtape-of-the-lost-decade....

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#78

Post by j03w »

pflats wrote: post #52
CognitiveLens wrote: post #13

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 pro…

Apart from having Latin-like script I don't think there is much similarity between English and Vietnamese.

Either way, isn't Japan also famous for its engineering prowess? I doubt that country with such high engineering competency will lack talent for web development simply because of the language barrier (if there is actually the lack of talent at all). I'm not saying language barrier doesn't exist but if language barrier didn't prevent them from having companies like Konami, Square Enix, Namco, Bandai, Nintendo or Sony then why would it prevents them to have more web developers?

Ruby was created by a Japanese for that matter.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#79

Post by dreamfactory »

CognitiveLens wrote: post #13

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…

> Italics and capital letters have little or nothing to do with how 'Western' web layouts are generally created, and are far from the only way to create emphasis or hierarchy in text.

They are key to graphic design. Though even in the West, web designers have only been waking up to formal graphic design in the last few years.

> Haven't Google, MS, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, everyone demonstrated that this is the goal of what they're doing?

The real money now is in commerce, and Japan is well-known for being behind in online commerce due to trust issues with plastic money. I guess that leaves them with old model of ads which would explain the 'million-dollar homepage' look.

Re: Why Japanese Web Design Is So Different

#80

Post by verisimilidude »

Someone wrote: post #75
verisimilidude wrote: post #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 c…

"Language Barrier [...] Many of the Japanese coders I've met have put in the effort to learn English." If they have to put in an effort, there _is_ a barrier. Compare that with parts of Europe, where the first words kids learn to read are "OK", "Cancel", "Yes", "No", and "Level". And that's only a slight exaggeration. That's a barrier, too, but a lower one.

It's a fair point. I guess I should say that most of the coders I know over there have overcome this barrier.
Post reply on HN