While an interesting story, if you ask anyone that had to pay for their FFXI or FFXIV subscription through the official website will have a hard time believing that Japan would lead anyone in...
While an interesting story, if you ask anyone that had to pay for their FFXI or FFXIV subscription through the official website will have a hard time believing that Japan would lead anyone in software UX.
There is an entire subgenre of video essays devoted to Japanese web design, and it boils down to "more information is better". This is a decent Answers In Progress video on the subject and this...
There is an entire subgenre of video essays devoted to Japanese web design, and it boils down to "more information is better". This is a decent Answers In Progress video on the subject and this follow up response by cynzy are a rather good starting point.
I actually like the overall design philosophy, I get it.
It's not just that. It's also the fact the UI designers in Japan get no say. Whatever the client wants the client must get (and usually they want to show everything because their company and their...
It's not just that. It's also the fact the UI designers in Japan get no say. Whatever the client wants the client must get (and usually they want to show everything because their company and their products are always the greatest, and maybe graphic design is their passion). That's why you get pages crammed with basically everything the site has to offer.
I've heard someone say that Japanese UI design is what other countries would have if the client always had it their way and could never be contradicted.
I also agree that Western-centric businesses tend to oversimplify to the point that most websites look and feel the same, but I do find the information density and cramped navigation of Japanese sites quite annoying to use as well (and I can read Japanese). They're both unpleasant extremes.
My wife works with various hospital admin systems here in Japan and they are ASTOUNDINGLY bad. Just walls of minuscule text and buttons. Zero UX. It’s all this Fuji and NEC stuff from almost 40...
My wife works with various hospital admin systems here in Japan and they are ASTOUNDINGLY bad. Just walls of minuscule text and buttons. Zero UX. It’s all this Fuji and NEC stuff from almost 40 years ago that has just been sticky taped in to new operating systems.
Honestly, having worked with a lot of systems here, I can’t say the world was ever in too much danger of a Japanese OS taking over anything. Interesting, sure. Usable? Weeeeeellll…..
Which is very interesting as much of the UX/UI design we talk about in our US centric business is "what does the user not need to see? What do they not care about that we can hide, set as a...
Which is very interesting as much of the UX/UI design we talk about in our US centric business is "what does the user not need to see? What do they not care about that we can hide, set as a default, or just not show?"
Huge caveat here, I have no experience as a UX designer, only really second hand experience. But my two cents are, I can see value in both schools of thought. It really depends on your target audience and what that specific UX is trying to achieve.
For an operating system that's for the everyman (like windows) I think you'd want to lean more into not overwhelming the user and giving them sensible defaults. But give power users the option to change stuff if they wanted somewhere else.
If this was a GUI for a GPU monitoring software, totally opposite. Give me everything on screen at once please!!
The concept you are talking about is progressive disclosure. There's a balancing act to show just enough to the user to give them context while not making them go too many levels down to get the...
The concept you are talking about is progressive disclosure.
There's a balancing act to show just enough to the user to give them context while not making them go too many levels down to get the info they need.
It's possible to overdo it in either direction.
I think many Apple products show too little information at the top level and there are many "clicks" to find what is needed.
But sometimes I've been in meetings where product owners are too focused on click count, maybe because they read an article about how it's bad.
I always thought the difference between Japanese industrial, interior, and landscape design, and Japanese web design was so striking. In all of the previous areas, Japan basically invented...
I always thought the difference between Japanese industrial, interior, and landscape design, and Japanese web design was so striking.
In all of the previous areas, Japan basically invented minimalism. The zen Buddhist aesthetic has been endlessly minmiced, and the wabi-sabi concept has basically ingrained itself in all modern interior and industrial design. If you look at traditional Japanese joinery and architecture, they're master classes in tasteful understated design, less is more, quantity over quality. I mean, hell, look at a first gen sony walkman and you can see the same thing.
Then you get onto the Japanese internet, and it's like your eyeballs are being assaulted by chaos and flashing colors. It feels like going back in time to the 90s. Its like the web equivalent of a cheap mini mall with vape shops, hookah lounges, a payday loan place, and a nail salon, each with their own annoying pattern of flashing rgb lights all trying to grab your attention.
It always baffles me how their usability with any hardware is incredible (like ticket vending machines etc.), but anything that is pure software is just ass. I did a small exchange in a technical...
It always baffles me how their usability with any hardware is incredible (like ticket vending machines etc.), but anything that is pure software is just ass.
I did a small exchange in a technical research group in a Japanese university, and the 4th year master students were absolutely clueless about coding.
Not to oversimplify, but here in the States, it is software that gets the respect and the $ investment, while hardware (which is genuinely a more difficult skill, requiring significantly more...
Not to oversimplify, but here in the States, it is software that gets the respect and the $ investment, while hardware (which is genuinely a more difficult skill, requiring significantly more education to achieve baseline competence, and I say this as someone who works mostly in software) incomes are paltry in comparison. In Japan, it is the hardware engineer that gets the respect, while software is seen in very low-respect terms. You see this pattern then repeat itself in shipping products large and small, across the board.
I view the Mogstation as what the Web should be like. I hate that computing in the US has become glossy magazines and the equivalent of those telephones with giant buttons. Better information...
I view the Mogstation as what the Web should be like. I hate that computing in the US has become glossy magazines and the equivalent of those telephones with giant buttons.
Better information density, normal font sizes, page loads represent the state instead of dynamic fluff that breaks expected browser behavior. Give me Ableton or Blender style UIs.
It's not something I end up having to use much, either. I signed up in 2018 and it's basically been set and forget? Maybe I've logged on to buy some emotes occasionally?
I absolutely agree. One of the things I hate about the current fashion in design is that there are countless companies out there who make their websites the primary ways to advertise their...
I absolutely agree. One of the things I hate about the current fashion in design is that there are countless companies out there who make their websites the primary ways to advertise their business, and yet their design is so glossy and generic you might not even be able to tell what it is they actually do.
Exactly. My expectation is to hear about something, and go to their website for more information. More often these days, what I'm met with is glorified billboards and an aggressive sales funnel...
Exactly. My expectation is to hear about something, and go to their website for more information. More often these days, what I'm met with is glorified billboards and an aggressive sales funnel that wants to collect contact information and get you signed up before even telling you how much something costs. If they're not pushing you down an automated path, they're getting you into a CRM so sales people can harass you. Just...no.
Oh man, now that you put it that way I think it might actually be on purpose to avoid liability. That way their salespeople can promise to bring the heavens down, and after they inevitably fail to...
Oh man, now that you put it that way I think it might actually be on purpose to avoid liability. That way their salespeople can promise to bring the heavens down, and after they inevitably fail to do so they cant be sued because any such promise was off the record.
Ultimately different philosophy. I read an interesting article about Japanese Web UI a few years back. The short of it is that Japanese people with their dens written language can quite literally...
Ultimately different philosophy. I read an interesting article about Japanese Web UI a few years back.
The short of it is that Japanese people with their dens written language can quite literally process information 3 times faster than the average English speaker. So what ends up as clutter and overflowing UI text and information overload is nice and comfy for a Japanese speaker. Bonus fact: it's also why Twitter with its old 144 character limit was especially popular in Japan. You can fit a lot more with 144 Japanese characters than 144 arabic ones.
Another half of it is indeed cultural. It seems like Japanese UX simply prefers detailed breakdowns of a mechanic before going into practice. So if you ever thought tutorials were overly bearing and exhausting, there's your culprit.
It depends on if you think more room on the screen means A cleaner interface More room to jam in more UI elements I assume the higher information processing lead to Japanese UI to trend towards...
It depends on if you think more room on the screen means
A cleaner interface
More room to jam in more UI elements
I assume the higher information processing lead to Japanese UI to trend towards the latter. More globalized sensibilities changed these patterns eventually, but we're talking in the last 7-8 years, so it's fairly recent.
While an interesting story, if you ask anyone that had to pay for their FFXI or FFXIV subscription through the official website will have a hard time believing that Japan would lead anyone in software UX.
There is an entire subgenre of video essays devoted to Japanese web design, and it boils down to "more information is better". This is a decent Answers In Progress video on the subject and this follow up response by cynzy are a rather good starting point.
I actually like the overall design philosophy, I get it.
It's not just that. It's also the fact the UI designers in Japan get no say. Whatever the client wants the client must get (and usually they want to show everything because their company and their products are always the greatest, and maybe graphic design is their passion). That's why you get pages crammed with basically everything the site has to offer.
I've heard someone say that Japanese UI design is what other countries would have if the client always had it their way and could never be contradicted.
I also agree that Western-centric businesses tend to oversimplify to the point that most websites look and feel the same, but I do find the information density and cramped navigation of Japanese sites quite annoying to use as well (and I can read Japanese). They're both unpleasant extremes.
My wife works with various hospital admin systems here in Japan and they are ASTOUNDINGLY bad. Just walls of minuscule text and buttons. Zero UX. It’s all this Fuji and NEC stuff from almost 40 years ago that has just been sticky taped in to new operating systems.
Honestly, having worked with a lot of systems here, I can’t say the world was ever in too much danger of a Japanese OS taking over anything. Interesting, sure. Usable? Weeeeeellll…..
Which is very interesting as much of the UX/UI design we talk about in our US centric business is "what does the user not need to see? What do they not care about that we can hide, set as a default, or just not show?"
Huge caveat here, I have no experience as a UX designer, only really second hand experience. But my two cents are, I can see value in both schools of thought. It really depends on your target audience and what that specific UX is trying to achieve.
For an operating system that's for the everyman (like windows) I think you'd want to lean more into not overwhelming the user and giving them sensible defaults. But give power users the option to change stuff if they wanted somewhere else.
If this was a GUI for a GPU monitoring software, totally opposite. Give me everything on screen at once please!!
The concept you are talking about is progressive disclosure.
There's a balancing act to show just enough to the user to give them context while not making them go too many levels down to get the info they need.
It's possible to overdo it in either direction.
I think many Apple products show too little information at the top level and there are many "clicks" to find what is needed.
But sometimes I've been in meetings where product owners are too focused on click count, maybe because they read an article about how it's bad.
I always thought the difference between Japanese industrial, interior, and landscape design, and Japanese web design was so striking.
In all of the previous areas, Japan basically invented minimalism. The zen Buddhist aesthetic has been endlessly minmiced, and the wabi-sabi concept has basically ingrained itself in all modern interior and industrial design. If you look at traditional Japanese joinery and architecture, they're master classes in tasteful understated design, less is more, quantity over quality. I mean, hell, look at a first gen sony walkman and you can see the same thing.
Then you get onto the Japanese internet, and it's like your eyeballs are being assaulted by chaos and flashing colors. It feels like going back in time to the 90s. Its like the web equivalent of a cheap mini mall with vape shops, hookah lounges, a payday loan place, and a nail salon, each with their own annoying pattern of flashing rgb lights all trying to grab your attention.
Its such a weird juxtaposition.
It always baffles me how their usability with any hardware is incredible (like ticket vending machines etc.), but anything that is pure software is just ass.
I did a small exchange in a technical research group in a Japanese university, and the 4th year master students were absolutely clueless about coding.
Not to oversimplify, but here in the States, it is software that gets the respect and the $ investment, while hardware (which is genuinely a more difficult skill, requiring significantly more education to achieve baseline competence, and I say this as someone who works mostly in software) incomes are paltry in comparison. In Japan, it is the hardware engineer that gets the respect, while software is seen in very low-respect terms. You see this pattern then repeat itself in shipping products large and small, across the board.
I view the Mogstation as what the Web should be like. I hate that computing in the US has become glossy magazines and the equivalent of those telephones with giant buttons.
Better information density, normal font sizes, page loads represent the state instead of dynamic fluff that breaks expected browser behavior. Give me Ableton or Blender style UIs.
It's not something I end up having to use much, either. I signed up in 2018 and it's basically been set and forget? Maybe I've logged on to buy some emotes occasionally?
I absolutely agree. One of the things I hate about the current fashion in design is that there are countless companies out there who make their websites the primary ways to advertise their business, and yet their design is so glossy and generic you might not even be able to tell what it is they actually do.
Exactly. My expectation is to hear about something, and go to their website for more information. More often these days, what I'm met with is glorified billboards and an aggressive sales funnel that wants to collect contact information and get you signed up before even telling you how much something costs. If they're not pushing you down an automated path, they're getting you into a CRM so sales people can harass you. Just...no.
Oh man, now that you put it that way I think it might actually be on purpose to avoid liability. That way their salespeople can promise to bring the heavens down, and after they inevitably fail to do so they cant be sued because any such promise was off the record.
Ultimately different philosophy. I read an interesting article about Japanese Web UI a few years back.
The short of it is that Japanese people with their dens written language can quite literally process information 3 times faster than the average English speaker. So what ends up as clutter and overflowing UI text and information overload is nice and comfy for a Japanese speaker. Bonus fact: it's also why Twitter with its old 144 character limit was especially popular in Japan. You can fit a lot more with 144 Japanese characters than 144 arabic ones.
Another half of it is indeed cultural. It seems like Japanese UX simply prefers detailed breakdowns of a mechanic before going into practice. So if you ever thought tutorials were overly bearing and exhausting, there's your culprit.
Wouldn't a denser written language require less text on a screen at a given time, not more?
It depends on if you think more room on the screen means
I assume the higher information processing lead to Japanese UI to trend towards the latter. More globalized sensibilities changed these patterns eventually, but we're talking in the last 7-8 years, so it's fairly recent.
I thought it would be HaikuOS, but that's actually a fork of BeOS which was created by an American company.