How culture made Japanese Internet design "Weird"

Omg i'm so excited to watch!! The cultural analysis component was really tough for me to navigate and the reason why I couldn't find convincing evidence was almost definitely because of a lack of domain knowledge.

I don't agree with your assessment of mainland China's Websites. They are a lot less dense than the Japanese or Taiwan's websites. In a sense, I don't feel any difference browsing that than the US websites.
On the other hand, browsing Taiwan's Websites feels like browsing Japanese websites.

I try explaining the cultural differences in terms of language/storytelling structure. I focus on how Japanese films are structured differently than Western films.

It permeates more if you look into East Asian letters system, Chinese letters, Japanese Kanji (which is Chinese), and Korean Hangul. You can make a heavily dense information into less sentence compared to roman letters in the western world. And East Asian people can read it faster to because they're not focusing their peripheral view into each letter, but the combination of letters makes the meaning to be read easier. This is true especially in Japanese which you can make up 60% of the intended information by just reading the Kanji and omit the hiragana and katakana.

The other theory I think related to the cultural difference is famous in the way that Western and Eastern people tell stories of their heroes. Western people infamously always tell the story of a single individual who thrives and success of tackling the problems, a heroic journey of the chosen one based on the old Abrahamic religion. It always centered in one person. On the other hand, East Asian old folktales and heroic stories such as Journey to The West or Water Margin, talks about a bunch of people working together to solve the problems. A collective mind reflecting their mindset in society.

I think you don't understand (in what meaning she said that) she doesn't wanna fuck over her Japanese viewership and other japanes loving people even though everyone knows thats the truth...

great video would love to see the video on shapes you were talking about

could it be caused by a more educated and tech oriented society?

where they buy with knowledge rather than based on emotions?

also i remember when sites were cluttered and i really enjoyed that because i could open a home page, scan everything and go back to my day.

now sites are designed more as an experience i guess. where you have to go through the process of scrolling and picking categories..

She liked her own comment 😂

Oh how I love these cultural analysis

Whut about india because we have a lot of famous messy sites and a lot of famous clean websites lol

It's because they have brain worms from all the dog they eat

Maybe language and how its built can have an influence on design itself. Ofc im from the western culture so I cant say for sure but i could see that how especially China has this rich language that doesnt only read one way but the context of what letter is used also matters.

what an incredible video! thank you for addressing the downfalls of the answers in progress video and also providing valuable context on cultural lens and how it shapes information processing!

Thank you for this video. I live in the USA, and I remember the 1st time I traveled to Europe, one of my favorite things was to see the way that the same tasks were accomplished in ways that were different than what I had seen. Examples such as the light switches and outlets in England are of different designs. Street signs are different, but communicate the same ideas. Also, when traveling, I noticed in England and France there are miles of open farm land without any houses, and then there would be a dense little village. In the US, we have open farm land, but a house every mile or so. I realize that these differences might be due more to practicality than culture, but the culture may have had an influence. What you explained in your video has me thinking more deeply of why these difference exist. I hope some day I can travel to East and appreciate even more cultural differences. This has become one of my favorite parts of traveling.

i remember being an exchange student in Japan back in 2006. We studied that subject with our teachers already back then. I remember the first time we saw those web pages, ads and newspapers, the teacher asked us how it made us feel and we all said it gave us anxiety. It's really fascinating to see the subject is still being researched almost 20 years later.

This is very interesting subject, great video!

I also noticed how when leaning Japanese I was told to drop the "subject" ( I, he, she, you) in conversation to sound more fluent, as context is usually implied in conversation. this is all starting to make a bit more sense.

I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with Japanese graphic design. What’s surprised me about the busy design is, with the modern tech that’s opened up all sorts of alternative layout options, compared to the classic web site from 20 years ago, there could be so much more variety. I’m sure there is some of that, but it doesn’t as pervasive as you might expect.

I'd also like to point out the major drawback of minimalist websites in the West...you have to click on ten different links to find anything. A common Google search for my bank's website is how to look up your bank statements! Same goes for phone service providers, school websites, etc. Minimalism is NOT objectively better.

Having had the opportunity to work in both Western and Asian contexts, I can attest to the initial complexity of grasping the aesthetic and cultural distinctions. This is particularly pertinent when operating within a global brand, where the task at hand involves localizing content while preserving consistency, especially in sales-oriented marketing materials. This undertaking is rife with challenges, yet it underscores the essence of being a designer — the ability to flex one's knowledge and adapt to the demands of the situation. great video and work! keep it up.

Wait what? I no im late to seeing this but there doesn't appear a difference in "busy-ness" to me....?!
It seems like the text portion covers about the same amount of space...
Just we (westerns) can be overloaded with all the foreign
symbols so it takes more brain function to process

very good video

I think it goes further than just West and East, not necessarily in websites. But I am Puerto Rican and growing up there I can tell that there is more art and more focus beautiful things than in the US and that affects how I see things.

I tend to see things as how can they all be pretty together where I notice a lot of people here buy things because theyre pretty alone. But they tend to clash rather than work together, ans if they work together they tend to be minimalist which is boring to me :(

You really admitted to liking your own comment and being mad that no one saw it lmao 💀💀💀💀

Have you read Joseph Heinrich's book "The WEIRDest People in the World"? He documents the primary cultural difference between what you call "Northwestern European Culture" and the rest of the world. So I've heard every "argument" that you offer, and also recognize that Sabrina Cruz (for Answer In Progress) started her assessment by saying that she is a STEM kid, and does not comprehend the cultural angle. So go ahead and keep hitting that button, and I know why I won't bother to subscribe or like your things.

I believe that Answer In Progress turned aside from the "culture" angle because other East Asian website were less information-dense/cluttered than the Japanese exemplars.

As a Japanese web designer, your content is really interesting and convincing! Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

That was awesome. What I found interesting is that western website design and, design in general with a lot of tech and whatnot, is very minimalistic and streamlined. Which, ironically reminds me of Buddhist and Japanese temples and Japanese gardens and a lot of Japanese interior design, and the prominence of IKEA/Swedish looking furniture in Japan. Minimalistic tidy living spaces, Western "Feng shui", etc.

But then you go into east Asian cities and it's pretty chaotic looking, and with marketing and websites and things. Their brains are shaped by their environment to come at things differently, but it still ain't no "zen garden" in Tokyo city.

It would be interesting to see studies (or a fun video like this) on people who have moved from one group to the other, and their brains starting to process/view things differently. I could imagine getting used to the more "cluttered" (to the "western eye") looking websites, and coming to appreciate/prefer them (and vice versa for the relevant Asian people/people shaped by those areas).

One other thing is that western websites I think used to generally be pretty bloody messy and ugly to look at and annoying to navigate at times... so I think it's easy for people to just relate to that and see these Asian websites as having poor website design, like they haven't culturally gotten around to cleaning it up yet or something. But in reality they're not like those old western websites that actually were sometimes just shittily laid out (but then maybe they weren't THAT bad, and it's still me unfairly comparing them to current design).

Thinking again about the calm tidy relaxing Asian environments I mention earlier... I don't know if that can be applied too widely in Asia actually. Western countries also have their stuff in that category. I think these countries often have a lot of history with buildings and gardens and stuff, which lends itself to tidiness, relaxation and calm, but that doesn't mean that vibe is a strong part of the Asian cultures.

This got very rambly! it's how I process my thoughts.

As an American who's brain works, differently, like I was a gifted kid, I'm ADHD, and I've basically been told my whole life that the way I think about things isn't normal, and that I should adapt to other people. I find this difference fascinating, esp bc I found the East Asian designs better (for me, not saying for everyone). i think the art is more aesthetically pleasing when it isn't focused on one subject, I like the web designs better bc I feel like I don't have to scroll for hours just to find the piece of information needed. And i just thought this was interesting and I wanted to mention it :)

1. I was thinking about the local apps that I use for searching restaurant (local apps of Yelp) & searching best price for electronics in Hong Kong, and they are still jam packed with information on the front page.

2. Is Wes Andreson’s movies are less interesting to the East Asian yet they have the “Wow” effect on the Western mind?

Asian cultures are more introverted and don't complain as much (like Germans, for example). Because this culture is more "rigid" and based on many rules that you have to follow. In Europe /America etcetera you don't have these rules ,these people are more encouraged to express critical thoughts(about politics ...). If I were to create such a confusing website, there would be complaints → website goes down. If the person has grown up with this lack of clarity and is introverted→ there are no complaints → website stays like this. Self-reflection: if most do it this way, I have to do it this way too → conformity, the shyness to stand out from the crowd is also such a thing in Asia. "The more I put on a website ==more money" is not always true, but could also be a reason.

I guess, Indian websites are in the center of it. Not too much open like western websites but not too much cramped like those of Japanese.

Culture + Maths

How Asian do you need to be? If you grow up in one place and then move to another, does our brain adapt?

Very interesting video! Thank you!

Have you never seen an airplane cockpit? They're all western design and it's hard to imagine making them any more information dense.
It's a matter of how your neural pathways are developed and trained. Culture can influence this but so many other things do too. This binary proposition you instantiate on how people think is just plain ignorant.
I am a westerner who has complained about webpage white space for decades. We never did this with print! Look at a paper WSJ, tell me that is not information dense.
You totally missed the boat on your analysis.
The far east just never made the mistake of added whitespace because it was no longer paper, no longer cost money. They retained the value of information density.

You should also be aware that many western corporate intranet sites are much more like Japanese web design, very information dense and designed for rapid navigation.

This feels spiteful, boastful even ... But I like the information dump ngl.

I spent most of my developing years in Japan as a child. Coming back to America people always acted like I was pride ful for being smarter or dumber because they didnt understand how I thought. I even interact socially like the Japanese on most occasions. I never thought about why I was this way until I got out of college.

Not sure if this is relevant or not, but I remember when I was a kid we had to make a paper for science class that was essentially a travel brochure for another planet. I did a lot of research and I did my best to utilize all of the space on the page, listing all the information that I could. My teacher commented that I needed to learn what information was relevant and what was not. This was something I continued to struggle with as I grew up and was often criticized for. Although I am neither ethnically or culturally Asian, I think that there is the possibility that some people are built to be more holistic or analytical, but culturally we sort of get molded and bent into the direction our society finds more acceptable.

Just from pure UI perspective, language mechanics between West Euro language group (aka FIGS) and East Asian languages (aka CCJK) are different. Western European language groups are sound oriented meaning whole collection letters consisting a word only makes senses when the entire spelling is spelled out. For example, letters "A", "I", and "R" only makes sense when they are put together as "AIR" denominated by space in front and after the word in English. In Japanese (and Chinese), "空” and "気" can still be understood even a space in between exists such as ”空 気”.

This allows different type of UI layout where line brakes, for example, to be in more flexible positions. Also, East Asian languages, in general, has higher information density than West Euro languages since they originate from pictorial representation of whole objects, things, and concepts. For example, think of a space needed to express a word "Philosophy" vs. the same word in Japanese "哲学”. This is not the argument of which culture is better than the other but space required to express words and sentences are much tighter per square inch per se. Perhaps it depends on the context and length of strings but in general, West Euro language requires 20-30% more space. Because of this, CCJK languages appear to be more "crowded" from UI real estate perspective.

It is also true that people in East Asia have much easier time in reading darker fonts with lighter backgrounds whereas reverse contrast is visually harder to read thus more Web pages appear in lighter, in a way more old fashioned, appearance.

Default font size for EA languages are 9pt in Windows system whereas West Euro languages are 8pt. This is because EA languages use way more characters in the upwards of 60k+ compared to West Euro languages expressed by combination of characters in ASCII range of 256 including A-Z and so called special characters such as * & % #. For example, 雲 (cloud) and 雪 (snow) , look very similar unless they are spelled out in larger font size to show the details of each. Again, this contributes to the notion of "crowded-ness".

Since EA languages are highly contextual, overall visual layouts are not necessarily as essential to supplement the meaning, compared to West Euro languages since it creates "pictures within pictures" sometimes negates and cancels out messages creators trying to convey, thus an "old HTML looking" still stans to date in EA Web pages.

My 5 cents as someone involved in this regard as an Engineer and a Project Manager for Microsoft Windows both in English and Japanese version including UI R&D.
Cheers

its happen in game industry too, japan (eastern asia in general) tend to be harder in level and challenge than westerner side

I already noticed in your thumbnale what they missed. Your left ear. 👂 🙉 🦻
How could they missed it...
Van Gogh didn't miss his.
You need to step up your game! 😂😂😍

Thank you, Cynthia, for this great video!
Although I have been professionally and privately invested very heavily in Japanese culture and encountered many of the examples you mentioned in your video a thousand times, your conceptualisation and the simple, yet convincing way it was presented allowed me a mental breakthrough as to the why these choices in presenting information are so different.

I hope this will allow me to progress even further in my attempts to understand eastern cultures.

Thanks for making this fantastic video!