Have Some Sushi – Slicing the Japanese Web Industry
Todays blog post is written by Ignas Sakalauskas – a web developer of ours who has lived the last six months in Taiwan, and before that – a year in Japan. Besides eating a lot of sushi and learning the intricacies of the local languages, Ignas was also able to form an interesting opinion about the local web industry and it’s trends.
Each Friday we eat Asian food for lunch on DevBridge’s account so I brought my steel chopsticks to the office: saving the planet and defending my lunch from sneaky Ninja Warrior attacks. From time to time we also have lunchtime discussions about Japan, yet no one visits the web development topic (which, technically, is our job). You would think that the Internet is the same all over the world and you would be correct to a certain extent. We all use the same TCP/IP, but have you ever thought that it could all be managed in a different way? Inspired by this idea I decided to write an article about the state of the web in Japan.
Small and unreadable?
That’s what people usually say about Chinese characters that all look the same to them. Not actually what I had in mind; I would like to discuss the Japanese web design trends. You are probably accustomed to large and legible titles, expressive images, visible buttons and simple instructions. That is not the case with Japanese websites – everything is small, detailed, and complex. Instead of having a clear call to action and a simple funnel you will be exposed to a ton of information that fills the screen. Why is that?
That is a good question that can be answered by looking into the culture itself. Do you spend time reading the manual after you purchase a new television set? More than likely you do not – you just glimpse at the page that you’re interested in if you experience a specific problem. It is quiet the opposite in a Japanese culture. People read not only manuals for TV’s, but also manuals for job interviews, studies and even life itself. Can you imagine a billion Chinese characters in one spot? In other words, that’s how the Japanese society works – everything looks very simple, but actually it’s very detailed and complex, like the human body. Instructions, manuals, laws and even the unwritten rules of daily life – small details are the most important component of those things. Obviously this is an oversimplification of a complex culture, but this pattern of complexity is also reflected on Japanese web design.
Design Trends - Kawaii
First of all, it’s not kiwi, it's kawaii – a Japanese word for cute, sweet or lovely. Second, we are not going to talk about girls in this blog post (I can see my coworkers rolling their eyes at me). Kawaii is a prominent aspect of Japanese pop culture. It influences merchandising, clothing, food, toys, personal appearance, behavior and mannerism. You can learn more about Kawaii on this Wikipedia page.
Take a look at a web design example that our Creative Director Adomas has created.
That looks pretty good. It’s elegant, modern, and clean. Now take a look at the Japanese website screen capture.
Assuming your client is Japanese, which will he or she choose? More than likely it will be the latter, with the small cute koala in the right bottom corner. Websites are supposed to be kawaii! This trend is currently not as strong as a lot of businesses are working towards being more internationalized.
The Mobile User – A Majority
Japanese mobile devices are not small to begin with, but they get even bigger when you flip them open. The goal is to have a bigger screen so that more content could fit at the same time, again, exposing as much detail as possible. For every Japanese, a cell phone is a must-have gadget used 24/7. It’s not polite to talk on the phone on trains or public areas, so individuals are constantly typing into the devices, using the web or messaging services.
Moreover, Japan has widely used mobile Internet since 2001 (beginning of 3G in Japan) and most websites have mobile versions adapted for cell phone use. I would be curious to learn if they have more computer terminal or mobile users surfing the World Wide Web in Japan...
Remember that packed and full of details website image? Now imagine it squeezed to a width of 270 pixels.
To save money smaller companies just make one website for both computer browser visitors and mobile devices, but it’s “tuned” to just one of the platforms. You are correct if you guessed that platform to be mobile phones. And a tiny mobile device website on your pc screen looks funny but at least it works! Larger companies build out both types of websites and also may differentiate mobile sites by cell phones User-Agent that is different for different phones and/or carriers.
Mobile Phone Technology
Japanese used to have the most advanced mobile sets in world… until smartphones hit the market. Most of the devices are currently imported into the country and the top ranked unit is currently the iPhone. The 3G version of the iPhone has been made specifically for Japan – it’s a big market of 127 million cell phone users that helped push the device into its current popularity.
Surprisingly, the iPhone does not support IR, which stands for Infrared. It’s a technology that has been around for a long time but never really picked up in the US for the consumer cell phone market. Let me explain why it’s (or was) important for mobile users in Japan.
Prior to smartphones all mobile devices in Japan had their own email addresses with the carrier’s domain. The email messages would be transmitted directly to the phone without being accessible through a web mail interface. The complex bit – all email addresses were long and hard to remember, such as easygoing-lew-si-.cp.dw-3-cb-d@ezweb.ne.jp. The solution was to implement IR that allowed the users “bump” their phones (bring them into close proximity) and exchange email addresses without having to retype or remember them. But let's get back to the iPhone! The Japanese like cute toys and all of the iPhone’s sliding UI effects look pretty cool and, say it with me, kawaii!
QR Codes
A couple of weeks ago our team visited Tech Week in Chicago. QR codes (square barcodes that are meant to be read by smartphones) were plastered everywhere in the show – brochures, advertisements, and handouts. It’s a new trend here in the US that is receiving a lot of buzz… except that it’s not really new at all. A QR code allows one to embed a certain piece of data into a visually small square block that can be them rapidly scanned – this is useful for embedding phone numbers, URL’s, or email addresses that otherwise would have to be typed in manually.
When I first came to Japan a couple of years ago everyone was already using the codes – it was actually developed in 1994 by Toyota! But, as you may guess, it was smaller and was not main concentration point in the design – small and between all the details. As I mentioned before, Japanese often have long email addresses, so to make sure you have no typos, it was easier to make the addresses as QR codes. The cheapest cell phones had functionality to generate and to scan QR’s. As I mentioned before, some technologies have been designed and implemented a long time before we even knew about them here in the states.
Mixi – the “Other” Social Network
It has nothing to do with music... or, I guess it does. Mixi is the largest social network in Japan (~80% of market) and was born almost at the same time as Facebook (beginning of 2004). Vast amount of members, millions of text messages and blog posts is the bread and butter of Mixi habitants. The network is very Japan-central – it has Japanese only User Interface and you need a cell phone from a Japanese carrier to confirm registration! Why has it become so popular?
I suspect that it due to it’s well made mobile version and communities that are similar to Google+ circles. These communities are very important for the Japanese. They are called a group society for a good reason. Recently Facebook success has also had an impact on Mixi – it received a Facebook Like “いいね” button to show your fondness of something, notifications, “what are you doing now“ field and, most importantly, the farm game!
Japanese are not ones to give up old habits easily, so Mixi is still popular and Facebook is slowly growing. That is not to say that the Japanese have not adapted new technology. Twitter is really popular among Japanese. They say it's the most efficient and not time consuming way to stay integrated into society... When I tried to create a twitter account it gave me a Japanese interface language only. I was too lazy to look how to switch back to English version, so I’m still using it in Japanese to this day.
Like short URLs?
Have you ever used short URL services like tinyurl.com or goo.gl? Ever imagine having a URL with just one symbol? Give it a shot - http://跳.jp/! You have probably heard about URL internationalization that began several years ago (for instance in Lithuanian - www.žalgiris.lt). Chinese characters were also included into the mix. Even through the URL I just gave you consist of only one character the Chinese characters needs 2 bytes to be encoded. Anyway, I tried to get a shorter URL for our company website and got “echo in town.jump.jp”, which actually looks like http://丁響.跳.jp . I have no idea how they convert the names, but you can play around if you wish and scare your grandma with “Japanese invasion” on the web.
Big and Fat Conclusions
Everything that has a beginning has an end (Matrix). I basically reviewed main features of web industry in general and Japanese national character impact on it. I realize it’s overgeneralized and one blog post is not enough to make it complete but hopefully it’s still entertaining and insightful.
I would like to emphasize one thing. It may appear that Japan is losing its position as the leader in technologies. I think they are actually learning from us, just like they did with the assembly line improvements for the automotive industry. Perhaps they are repeating themselves like they did more than one hundred years ago with research and expeditions. All I know is that decades are changing fast, so we should stay tuned and see what Japan has to show off as time goes! Banzai!
