If you have ever browsed the Japanese web you might have wondered “why are most pages so messy? Do Japanese really like that kind of busy, overly crowded layout, that they design the sites like this?

And the answer to this question is not: “Yes we love godawful design and we mourn the depreciation of the <BLINK> tag!“. The Truth™ is:

Most of these busy Japanese web sites are not messy on purpose, they just happened as a result of compulsion to consensus, and designers incapable of arguing the reasons for their designs.

The layout of these Japanese websites, that look like Shinjuku at night wasn’t a conscious choice of someone saying “yep, that’s a really good design, let’s go with this”. They are simply showcases for how bad consensus driven design by committee can get. And with “consensus” I don’t mean “discussing issues until you come to an agreement”, I mean the kind of misguided compulsion to conformity where people believe, arguments and differing opinions are bad, so you need to listen to every opinion and then make everybody happy. This compulsion to conformity happens due to societal pressure, but there’s also a reason that’s endemic to Japanese company culture.

Consensus Killed the Designer

Historically, large Japanese companies were really good in raising generalists. It was common to have a freshman from college start off in one department first, for example as sales people, then after a few years they’d be rotated to do other work, maybe marketing, and then rotated to some other department, with the purpose to get to know “the whole company”. As far as generalists go, that’s actually not the worst concept. But it also creates this kind of “everybody’s opinion is the same” thinking, because they’re all dilettantes. You just don’t want these people meddle in areas that need to be driven by experts.

In a truly professional environment, all opinions cannot be treated as equally valid. This is not a democracy where everybody gets one vote, it’s a meritocracy, where the expert’s opinion should have more gravity. Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for having discussions openly and making sure everyone, regardless of position or rank, can voice their opinions. You never know, what fresh angle the janitor might have on something that you never thought of. However, even the vernacular knows that “too many cooks spoil the broth”. When all arguments have been presented, the expert should make an informed decision.

It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.

— Steve Jobs

The opinion of the designer/art director, should have more weight on all matters of design and UX than the opinion of other non-experts, regardless whether they’re stakeholders or not. That is not to say that the designer can single-handedly override business goals. Business goals will feed into what direction to take with the design in the first place, but the focus needs to be on the user’s needs and how those can drive your business, not the other way around.

Learn to Win An Argument…

I believe, there’s another reason why designers don’t speak up more about bad design decisions in Japan. It is their incapability of asserting their expertise by saying: “no, that’s a bad idea, let’s not do this – here’s why…”. I don’t know what they teach design students in Japan, but from the many years working with designers here it appears they mostly learn how to use the software, they learn colour theory, they might be brilliant in drawing and painting, they might know design principles as guiding rules, but they lack the deeper understanding of these principles, the reason why and how these rules came to be and what they try to achieve.

For everything you do in your designs you should ask yourself: what purpose does this element have and does it fulfil that purpose? Does it work? If it serves no purpose, remove it. Design is purpose driven, it needs to serve a purpose. When someone asks you why you did certain things in your design, “because it looks nicer that way” is not an acceptable answer. It’s a completely subjective assessment void of any objective or measurable criteria. Creating your designs on such subjective criteria only exposes lack of objective, lack of focus, lack of method. To the surprise of many, there are objective criteria to judge good design and it’s as simple as what I mentioned above:

What purpose does this design have, and does it fulfil that purpose?

That’s your litmus test for design, in one sentence right there. You cannot expect to win an argument with a non-designer if you can’t explain why you insist on certain dos and don’ts. In order to defend your design decisions, be prepared to explain every single one of them to the rest of the team. If you want to be the expert – the meritocrat – prove your expertise.

But, but, but, Japan Is Sooo Unique…

Big brands using global standards do not suffer big losses in Japan due to their “un-Japanese” website. I’ve launched global fashion brand e-commerce operations from scratch, where the front-end was based 95% on a global standard design. I’ve applied global design standards in Japan many times over and the adjustments necessary for Japan were always in the details and not the overall layout or appearance: things like font sizes, line heights, and mostly Japan-only features for payment, checkout etc. these sites are all still up and running, going strong.

Many big brands these days have global standards for their website, I have yet to hear how they almost went out of business in Japan, because the website looked way too clean, being not busy enough, or being too easy to read.

It’s The Little Things

When it comes to usability as such, we’re all the same. Human brains work the same throughout races, we normally all have two eyes and ears and our brains work mostly the same. There are differences in content and context (mostly the “what”), but if you zoom out and see the big picture, there are little to no differences in fundamental visual communication, human perception and interaction (the “how”) even beween cultures.

As for cultural differences – they’re not as immense as some people like to think. Yes, you can’t be as frivolous with the usage of the colour green in Islamic countries, and the thumbs up in South America, the Middle East and parts of Africa is the same as the middle finger elsewhere, and you might have noticed watching Inglorious Basterds, that Germans count to three by stretching out first their thumb, then index, and then the middle finger, while Anglophones usually use index, middle and ring finger for that. Japanese, when counting with their fingers, start with all fingers stretched out, and “count down” retracting fingers starting with the thumb. But none of that is an excuse to make a complete mess of your website.

Content as Key Differentiator

I don’t say you can simply go out and shoehorn any Japanese website into a western corset and you’ll be just fine. Japanese customers need more affirmation and detailed content in order to come to a purchase decision.

The place to have such detailed and affirmative content is on editorial/landing pages, and product pages. That is: the point where the user has already shown interest in your product. Trying to put any of this elsewhere will only introduce confusion and increase the level of visual noise that doesn’t add any value or improve the experience. Nobody wants to hear in-depth details before they have even decided whether to look at the product.

The people who want to put everything on the top page, do this because they have KPIs for their department to fulfil, so they want “their” content right there all the time. It’s not about the customer it’s all about them. Those are the same people who put a pop-up for a newsletter sign-up on the top page, basically blocking every first time visitor from looking at your site on their own terms, shouting: “we don’t care what you came here for, now listen what we want you to do…”. This is the pinnacle of bad user experience, it’s when UX becomes business centric instead of user centric.

People Appreciate the “Zen” of The Web

The equivalent for an overly busy top page is the Akihabara electronic store. It might be funny to watch the first time, for being such an oddball experience computers getting sold like tuna on the fishmarket – but honestly, do you really like the noisy electronic shops in Japan, where the (horrible) music is deafening, everything is blinking and they have people shout at you at the entrance about sales campaigns? Do you really enjoy going there? I don’t want my online experience to turn into Akihabara.

Japanese people do appreciate stone gardens – you bet they’ll also get the Zen of a clean and peaceful website. Getting your voice heard isn’t necessarily about shouting the loudest, in a quiet room people can even hear you whisper.