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In the mind’s eye of many people Japan is a land of tranquil Zen gardens, serene temples, and exquisite tea ceremonies. Both traditional and contemporary Japanese architecture, books and magazines are the envy of designers worldwide. Yet for some reason practically none of this mastery has been translated into digital products, in particular websites (...)

http://randomwire.com/why-japanese-web-d...different/

I've noticed that Japanese web design tends to follow their analog counterparts. Rakuten's site looks like a virtual ドンキホーテ with crowded displays and banners all over the place, and Yomiuri's website looks like a virtual newspaper with the text bunched up with no regard to visual aesthetics so as to maximize content (I also find Japanese newspaper design visually repulsive with all the bars, columns, and general lack of white space). However, websites for high-end department stores or niche magazines tend to have the elegant and minimal designs we associate with traditional Japanese design.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if a low-end chain in Japan decided to do away with all the banners, crowded displays, loudspeaker announcements, and fast-paced music. Would Japanese consumers embrace it? Would sales decline (I suspect this is one of the reasons they do these things. The stimulation overload gets customers to buy their stuff and check out right away, allowing for more customer volume)?

Ugh. Design-wise, most JP websites are still trapped in 2003. The only missing is the Flash intro screen. -_-

There are some great designers there, and some great individual websites, true, but going to any information source, like NHK, for example, really makes me want to stuff my head in a bucket of water until the pain goes away.

vileru Wrote:I've noticed that Japanese web design tends to follow their analog counterparts. Rakuten's site looks like a virtual ドンキホーテ with crowded displays and banners all over the place,

That's what the key is, I think. A lot of Americans would be surprised to go in stores like Don Quixote or Bic Camera and see non-stop blaring lights, loud songs and ads over the loudspeakers, garish colored banners all over the place, etc.

Can you imagine hearing this on non-stop loop at an American electronics store:

I liked the "1980’s vision of the future" thing about Tokyo.

I've heard horror stories about the design of applications too (relational databases without relationships, code written by sales staff that needs to be maintained etc). I wonder if the fact that a lot of people who work these jobs are English literature graduates or otherwise completely unqualified when they begin, as well as many Japanese companies being behind when it comes to technology in general.

Amazon does well in Japan (though it's still quite cluttered), so would Japanese audiences respond to or even prefer modern websites if presented with the choice? When I ask Japanese about Rakuten itself, I generally hear things about points or familiarity and disdain regarding the visual junk.

I think the biggest problem with web design in Japan is the environment it occurs in. The people designing Rakuten's website have to listen to the higher ups. I believe that all the site design decisions are probably driven by old farts who follow the creed of "this is how we have always done it so why change?" or "if it's not made perfectly clear then no one will understand."

There are plenty of design shops out there in Japan that are making nicely designed websites; but a lot of these places are quite clearly run by younger generations.

I stand by this idea that I have that if Japanese really did want these Geocities-era websites then there's no way that Apple's products would have taken off as well as they have.

jimeux Wrote:I've heard horror stories about the design of applications too (relational databases without relationships, code written by sales staff that needs to be maintained etc). I wonder if the fact that a lot of people who work these jobs are English literature graduates or otherwise completely unqualified when they begin, as well as many Japanese companies being behind when it comes to technology in general.

Something else to keep in mind is how many workers are found in Japan. I have a sinking suspicion that the ratio of people that entered their current position because they wanted to vs the people that were simply placed there, leans heavily in the latter. Fresh graduates out of college are hired by large corporations with no real "destination" in the company and are put where the company needs them and then trained in that. So what you end up with is a lot of people working in design that probably don't have a lot of experience actually doing design and are simply trained on what their supervisors know and their supervisors were probably in the same situation. Rinse and repeat.

I have a japanese friend who is doing a graduate thesis on japanese design aesthetics, specifically as they relate to temples and shrines. I remember there was a similar thread on this forum a year or 2 ago picking apart the rakuten websites and similar design ideas, so i mentioned it to her and i think her reply was pretty interesting. specifically she was talking about the ごちゃごちゃ (messy/jumbled-up chaotic) aesthetic, and how this has been present in japanese design going back centuries.
looking at old shinto shrines, you would have a shrine for a cow over here, and a tree with hanging paper thingies of there, and if someone with some money wanted to make a donation they would just find a space for whatever the hell he felt like buying. well this goes on for a while and you have a space that begins to look kinda crazy. and you could say the same for some Buddhist temples that get crowded with stuff everywhere inside too.
She then connected that to the lack of overall urban planning in japan. you can pretty much put a skyscraper in the middle of a row of tiny shops. there might be a small shrine somewhere in there too. oh and maybe a uniqlo. my western friends think this makes the japanese cities look crazy but if you look carefully this isn't an accident. it really runs throughout the country to a large extent.
You could also say it is partly related to the 使い捨て(use and throw away) mentality of most japanese people. buildings there generally get demolished after 20 years of use, so what is the point of planning if buildings have such a turnover. well you extrapolate from that idea and you just have this continual chaotic accumulation that becomes an overriding principle, an aesthetic end as opposed to a means.
(here's a nice podcast talking about the 使い捨て approach to buildings and the strangeness that brings to real estate in japan generally: http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/27/why-a...podcast-3/ )
and then you take all of that and fast-forward to today, and you get shinjuku biklo (BIC camera & Uniqlo in one store). in their advertising they actually use the phrase 素晴らしくゴッチャゴッチャ (splendidly jumbled and chaotic). and that themesong is always running in the background making you feel as hyper and crazy as the space you're in.

I once had the misfortune of being stuck in biklo for an hour, and was getting really exhausted/freaked out by it all... I asked one of the workers if they go crazy from the over-stimulus, or what's it like being in a place like that 8 hours a day 5 days a week. She said that after the first week you don't hear the music or see the flashing lights... your body just learns to block it all out.

An alternate theory might simply be that these desensitized people are the ones designing all the websites...

dtcamero Wrote:and then you take all of that and fast-forward to today, and you get shinjuku biklo (BIC camera & Uniqlo in one store). in their advertising they actually use the phrase 素晴らしくゴッチャゴッチャ (splendidly jumbled and chaotic). and that themesong is always running in the background making you feel as hyper and crazy as the space you're in.

I once had the misfortune of being stuck in biklo for an hour, and was getting really exhausted/freaked out by it all

I've been to that one before; it's fun to look at the electronics but it feels like you're in a Chuck E Cheese or something.

dtcamero Wrote:She then connected that to the lack of overall urban planning in japan. you can pretty much put a skyscraper in the middle of a row of tiny shops. there might be a small shrine somewhere in there too. oh and maybe a uniqlo. my western friends think this makes the japanese cities look crazy but if you look carefully this isn't an accident. it really runs throughout the country to a large extent.

For what its worth, I actually like the way Tokyo (and Osaka to a lesser extent) is laid out. The place-it-where-ever design leads to the city being incredible and always something of an adventure when you get out and walk around.

That said, something to keep in mind. Tokyo and Osaka were not cities built from the ground up, they grew and swallowed up villages/towns here and there that eventually became "Tokyo" or "Osaka." It's hard to plan urban development when you have people/families with land that they refuse to sell so someone can build an apartment complex. One of the best planned cities I saw in Japan was Tsukuba, it was an absolute joy to drive through Tsukuba compared to other regions.