This article by David Gilbert of Random Wire on Japanese web design has gone around for a while and is worth a read if, like me, you haven’t seen it yet. 🗾
David asks why Japanese websites are so “different” compared to European and Western site design. I appreciated this feedback from Stephen Cronin when I shared the article on Post Status Slack:
“It’s a very similar thing with Chinese web design. I taught IT in China back in 2006-2008 which included a little (Western) web design, but the sites the students were not so secretly browsing in class bore no resemblance to what was being taught! And they haven’t changed that much since then, whereas Western web design has moved on a lot.
I think there’s an element of what works in the West doesn’t (and shouldn’t) necessarily work elsewhere. We often map our ideas onto other cultures and think they are lacking somehow, but the more we can look at differences and try to understand them, the better!”
