Japanese web design: weird, but it works. Here's why

As someone who grew up with 90s internet, i miss getting all the info shoved at my face. All websites now contain endless scrolling of blown up pictures.

"Japan has been living in the year 2000 since 1980"

I mean, the Japanese one looks like the original yahoo

As Japanese, I agree with most of the points, but the biggest reason is that over 30% of the population is 65+ yo and they tend to prefer "outdated" designs. The examples in the video are targeting mainly elder people (though the cafeteria is a cafeteria in a uni). Also I want to add that the simple-looking Google is the top share in search engines and Amazon that looks almost the same as the US is the top in e-commerce in Japan.

Similar to my understanding from those other vids, Japanese UI design revolves around the site being an information hub or directory, whereas much of the Western world's UI design revolves around sales funnels and a call to action - their brand of low friction is more like make the ground as slippery as possible so you can slide into giving up your information or your money before you know it, then, if you realize you fell into a ditch it's hard to get out 🗿 I like clean, artistic, or visually exciting design, but I don't like the obsession of holding your hand and running with it over clarity and user agency. I think another thing is a focus on trends and things that are new/contemporary, vs the norm of enjoying things that are familiar or traditional.

Good points. However, having worked in Japan in Japanese companies, I can safely say that the reason why these sites don't change is not because of the reasons you gave, but because "this is how it has always been done", and the managers are still the same old jiji who knows nothing except keeping in their lanes and the status quo.

I'm not completely sure I understand the anecdote about the Japanese keyboard. As someone who's been learning Japanese for a while, I'm actually actively using that type of keyboard and in my opinion it is a very smart design that neatly fits the characteristics of the Japanese language and I'd argue makes you type less than a qwerty keyboard would. Here's what I mean: Japanese doesn't really have the sorts of consonant clusters you might find in some European languages, but instead every "syllable" consists of one (or no) consonant followed by a vowel. And there are only 5 vowel sounds in Japanese: a i u e o. So you're pretty much guaranteed to always be following up every consonant by one these vowels. Which means that if you have a system in which you either tap one of the consonant buttons or flick it in one of the four cardinal directions, you have taken care of all the possible combinations of (consonant) + (vowel). Basically this: む みまめ も is the same as this: mu mi ma me mo So in the end you would need the same amount of taps as in qwerty (one for the consonant group and then one for the vowel), but now the distance that your finger travels is shortened (since the vowel variants pop up around the initially selected character). But that's not all! Written Japanese doesn't have distinct characters for differentiating voiced vs unvoiced consonants (for example g vs k), but instead has a marking on the same character to indicate voicedness (compare か vs が or す vs ず). So they also made a button for that. All of this means that they have way fewer buttons on their keyboard, which in turn means the keys/buttons can be made bigger relative to qwerty keys. And bigger buttons means less of a chance of mistyping and having to correct yourself. So in the end, what confuses me about this example is that it seems that in direct comparison with the qwerty keyboard, the design principles are flipped. The qwerty one is the one that has all the available choices upfront and crams it all into a tight space while the Japanese keyboard prioritizes ergonomics and frictionless UX (typos are certain to cause friction, I'd argue). Because it should be noted that Japanese would also work with a qwerty keyboard (as it does on a desktop PC), so this design isn't really born out of necessity.

To my taste, this was a 10 out of 10 for - actually answering the question (= the opposite of clickbait). To the extent it is possible to answer any question in demand of a complex answer. - clarity - teaching me something new, and - entertaining and enjoyable to watch

Didi's information rich approach looks so useful. With Uber everything looks minimal and simple but when your ride falls through you're left with no context about what just happened

This is the kind of quality deep dive from a micro youtuber I desire. Original insights, careful observations, excellent distillations.

Rakuten(big e-commerce in japan) had done AB test that simple design vs horrible design. horrible site design had better result. (at least for their customer) that's why they are like that and personaly i hate those.

Here's a fun fact for you all. It's not only internet, but powerpoint presentations as well. When I was in university in Tokyo and started having weekly presentations at my lab. The number one complaint I had was why my slides were so empty. In Japanese education system there seems to be a teaching from very young age that any whitespace must not be wasted...

I’m not sure about innovation in Japan, but it seems to me that it’s not just that they prioritize hardware over software. I recently went to visit friends (they live in Osaka) and was amazed at how much technology there is from the 2000s and even the 90s. I saw several stores with CDs; our Japanese friends, whom we visited, had a VHS player at home. Friends told me that government agencies still use floppy disks(!). For example, in Russia we haven’t had all this for a long time. Unless it’s stored in someone’s attic, but not used on a daily basis.

I've lived in China for half a decade and indeed most things are designed so that every inch of space is filled with details and information, while other things may take an opposite approach, and be extremely minimalistic. I agree with what's said in the video. I also feel that the culture here just tends to fall into extremes in all aspects of human existence. But it's just a generalization that I have never observed or studied. I would say that for the most part, the designs have organically evolved to look like that because of the common culture of conformity and copying (which is encouraged). For example, whenever we are designing a new product here, the management suggests "let's do it like a company X" does that. About the choices given in apps, like different types of rides, and dozens of assortments of a product on Taobao, it may seem at first like a luxury, but now I find myself dreading shopping for anything because choosing from among so many options is mentally exhausting. Not to mention that such complexity invites room for a lot of mistakes.

I will say. Being very illustrative with food is something I wish the US would borrow from Japan (among other things) Gosh I’m so indecisive, every time I’m living in Japan I appreciate having food replicas in the outside windows to see how the food looks and what everything is. I’m a full time web developer and I did look into this once. It’s so interesting. The intersection of culture , mind , and technology in general is interesting. Thank you for the video. Edit:oh the high context thing is sooo true haha. I’ve grown accustomed to it. I don’t live there but I’ve spent enough time. When the chef mentions how nice it is that I seem to be so appreciative of the food and how much I’m savoring it I know he wants me to hurry up already cuz I’ve been there a while hahahaha

Finally, a channel that explains something I am interested in without going "off-topic" from the thumbnail....I hope your channel becomes successful. Thank you for keeping it to the point, being unique in your delivery, and interesting.

Japanese software developer here. There's another factor here, which maybe is related to the point about higher information density: Japan has a lot of dense, pedestrian-first cities, which means people are constantly interacting with each other. It's not like in North America, where you meet your family at home, go to work and meet your coworkers there, and then go home again. Even if it's just to avoid bumping into someone else at the station, you're talking pretty frequently. You get used to going out of your way to avoid stepping on each other's toes, both literally and figuratively. Also, culturally, Japan's had an Internet before the Internet, just that the network layer buffered data on the order of hours as opposed to milliseconds, because information would get passed around by foot. Sneakernet was real. That's kind of why Japanese TV is so weird: even celebrities have had to be down-to-earth to be accepted, so the production value and pace of iteration has always been closer to what it is on YouTube nowadays -- minus the sheer number of channels that allows a lot of YouTube to end up being actually good. It's also why software and IT in general is so second class in Japan: there just hasn't been as much of a need. I still find that, even with all its flaws, the convenience of, say, Tokyo, more than makes up for the convenience of online services here in Vancouver. At the same time, I found it sad when, for example, around ten years ago, I asked why my friend needed a PSP, a phone, an mp3 player and a watch, when all I had was an iPhone 3. His baffling answer: "What if the battery runs out?" So yeah, we fell behind, and now I fear that a lot of organizations in Japan are making a ton of mistakes in its frantic rush to catch up.

Growing up in Japan, I can tell you first hand that "taijin kyofusho" is an utterly demoralizing part of Japanese culture and society and one of the main drivers behind Japanese people searching for ways out of Japan. It basically teaches you to cancel yourself in deference to others, but without fully recognizing who or what the self or the other is. And it's not taught in an overtly explicated way, it's incremental, starting in pre-school with behavioral structures in public institutions (positioning objects, mapping lines and boundaries etc.). People often say to me, "who the f are you to judge thousands of years of culture?" To which I say, I am an individual who thinks that sometimes cultures can get it wrong and this is one of the those times. I moved to the US when I was 20 for study abroad in uni, and I didn't go back.

I love this and you opened my perspective to alternate layouts catering to cultural differences. Thanks for tanking the time to make this video!

This was incredibly insightful! Thank you for sharing. I knew there was a reason for these types of designs still existing but never had any context. You’ve opened my eyes to a few different ways to see how these information dense sites are more clear for their users.