A hundred articles on usability are written in or translated into Japanese every year, and a hundred of them are ignored.

Throw this one on the heap.

Posted by: Adam on January 26, 2003 11:20 AM

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People in other countries read and speak other languages. Well, I guess I have to ignore your web page because it's not written in English. Ha ha!

What an incredibly inane observation to make. I'm not sure you could be more arrogant.

Posted by: Simon on January 27, 2003 11:43 AM

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I think what Adam was trying to say was that the Japanese don't pay too much attention to usability, not that articles written in other languages are worthless.

Or am I wrong?

Posted by: MadMan on January 27, 2003 04:04 PM

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Simon:

You may want to look at some of Adam Greenfield’s other comments on
usability in Japan. For instance: My boss is a 48-year-old housewife from Niigata Prefecture

Posted by: Kent on January 27, 2003 06:36 PM

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Or -- knowing that Adam speaks Japanese and has practiced IA in Japan -- he may have meant he read the article and didn't think much of it, for reasons not mentioned.

There are lots of bad articles about usability in lots of langauges.

However, I'd say MadMan's guess is probably accurate based on Adam's articles and other comments made elsewhere.

Posted by: George Olsen on January 27, 2003 08:12 PM

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Thanks, MadMan, Kent, George. You are all correct.

In case that needs further clarification, Simon: obviously, it is not whether or not a given article is written in Japanese that renders it pointless, it is how an audience responds to and uses it.

In the case of the Japanese Web development community, it is my considered opinion that there is still critical confusion as to what "usability" means and implies. I think the evidence of just about any corporate Japanese Web site you can point at will substantiate this viewpoint.

It goes (way) beyond the Web, too. I read in last month's AXIS Magazine, which is the foremost serious Japanese journal of design, that a new, TiVo-like device being brought to market by Sony is considered "user friendly" because it "completely eliminates operation buttons" and sports a blue light which "gradually emits and then fades, as though the machine itself is pulsing, indicating that the user's favorite program is being recorded."

This "establishes a new relationship between machines and people"??

I mean, aside from the fact that every iMac, iBook, PowerMac and PowerBook sold in the last four years has done just this, and aside from the fact that, yes, it does indicate some otherwise potentially obscure internal state of the machine to the user, in what way does this conduce to the device's usability?

The sad, plain fact is that most Japanese Web sites - and as we've seen, no small percentage of Japanese hardware - are wretchedly unusable, overburdened with "friendly" (i.e. pointless) features, provided with opaque navigational frameworks, and sorted into categorization schemas that defy ready comprehension even by other native Japanese. Labeling remains a poorly understood art, and even basic issues like when to require users to log in to gain access to content are routinely handled in ways that would be considered hamfistedly amateurish in Western practice.

Now, this is harsh, and it sounds at first blush unbelievably arrogant and hyperbolic, and in consequence I am not a particularly beloved presence in Japanese Web development circles. Unfortunately, it's also true, and the evidence is there for anyone to be seen - which accounts for why so many of the same people who complain about my lack of diplomacy also hire me to suggest improvements to their sites. I'm sure there are many folks here who would be happy for me to bugger off so they could return to the happier task of giving each other Web design awards and garlands for "user friendliness."

But it's not going to happen on my watch. I stand by the notion that Japanese users, just as much as any human beings anywhere else in the world, have the inalienable right to devices and experiences that have been designed to account for their needs, limitations and preferences.

Posted by: Adam on January 29, 2003 08:44 AM

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I like my powerbook "nite lite" because I'm a lazy user. I close the lid and forget to turn the damn thing off. I like to shut down before I throw it in a bag and hit the pavement, and I can tell immediately if it is on or not by seeing the tiny green light pulsing in the back of it. Again, I am too lazy to open it and attempt to wake it up - I want to know if it is on or not without doing that. Only if it's on will I open it and shut down.

So, in other words, it's very usable.

Perhaps it is the very nature of traditional usability (the JN kind of usability) that is so repellant to the Japanese, who are very visual and want things to also be friendly and polite. Perhaps traditional usability is simply too rough.

The challenge, then, is to make usability work for the Japanese mindset, to strike a compromise between what is best, and what will make it better. I think it would be an interesting challenge, and it sometimes makes me wish I could speak intelligible Japanese.

Posted by: Lydia on January 29, 2003 07:29 PM

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Lydia, don't misread me: I love the Apple breath light, and I agree, in the Apple context it performs a highly useful function, in situations just like the ones you mention and others.

I think we can agree that there's the same sort of issue with a Tivo-type unit, that it looks inert while it's doing its job, and it is indeed very thoughtful to provide the user with a cue that it is in fact operating.

But that's just one aspect of its operation. By my lights (sorry), you'd have to consider the entire interface of a device before lauding it in toto as "user-friendly," not just one dashboard doohickey.

With regard to the challenge you mention, you are more than welcome to come on over here and give it your best shot. I will promise you that there is plenty of overt interest in "usability," as it's been a buzzword among corporate audiences for just about the entire time I've been here.

However, as you surmise, there is very little interest in (or budgetary tolerance for) the hard work of actually doing usability and user testing. In my experience here, it has generally been sufficient for executives to assure the lapdog business and design press that "usability" and "user friendliness" are important to them for these comments to be taken at face value, even when the product in question is known to be a mess (i.e., in subsequent testing, no fewer than 80% of users report being unable to figure out the meaning of labels or purpose of provided functionality).

Posted by: Adam on January 29, 2003 09:37 PM

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Adam, same sort of issues out here in Hong Kong.

We have been assisting build the "usability club" here for approx 1.5 years and still very much in "education" mode for 2003 :)

Posted by: Daniel Szuc on January 30, 2003 01:09 AM

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