[Sigia-l] Design guidelines for Japanese Web users

[Adam Greenfield]

Richard Law wrote:
 

> I know many people use smaller laptops in Japan, so this may reinforce a
> tendency for larger type on Web sites and/or making certain users can adjust
> the size of fonts on demand.

Actually, Richard, I haven't seen much "laptop jr." usage. The ones I have
encountered in use seem to be fashion accessories more than working tools,
and I certainly haven't seen any heavy-duty Web activity on them.

For the most part, people here use the same sorts of machines you're used to
if they're going to use a computer at all. The real distinction you need to
watch out for - and this affects strategy way before it impacts development
and screen architecture - is that people use keitai (mobile phones) in
strong preference to laptops, in many of the roles Westerners might expect
to use a PC.

Under these circumstances, computer use can come to be subtly deprecated.
I've seen teenage girls in Shibuya watch a "middle-aged" (i.e. 40 yr old)
man fumble at the thumb-entry interface of his keitai and sneer "He really
should be using a PC."

> Additionally, the Japanese are use to reading from right to left. Does that
> behavior map over to Web-based reading?
> 
I wondered this when I first hit the ground here, and spent a good bit of
time exploring eyetracking in ideographic-language native speakers and
developing R-L screen layouts, full of sincerity and diligence.

It doesn't seem to matter a bit. Japanese *books* and *magazines* are read
in right to left page order, but it's different from, say, Hebrew: the
language is still parsed L-R. (There is a top-to-bottom display format where
*columns* are scanned in right-to-left order, but this is seen as archaic.)

Remember, too, that folks here grew up in the same media environment we all
did. Japan is a whole lot less exotic than one might expect.

Just make sure to have an animated mascot on your screen somewhere and
you'll do fine. ; . )

Hope this helps,
Adam Greenfield
Lead information architect

Frontage-Razorfish
Tokyo

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