“Indeed, Japanese handsets have become prime examples of feature creep gone mad. In many cases, phones in Japan are far too complex for users to master. “There are tons of buttons, and different combinations or lengths of time yield different results,’” says Koh Aoki, an engineer who lives in Tokyo. “Experimenting with different key combinations [...]
BusinessWeek has just published a couple of interesting articles about designing across cultures. The first one looks at the challenges bringing OXO products to Japan, the second at design in India. I’ve discussed culturally sensitive design with several people over the last few years, and I feel these design challenges require an interesting balance of [...]
The page is full of examples.
“Apparently, Japanese Smileys(Emoticons) are read vertically while eastern Smileys(Emoticons) are read horizontally. And Japanese Smileys have more variation than eastern ons. I think the reason is that while American(alphabet) letters in computer are 1 byte, Japanese letters in computer are 2 bytes, so Japanese letters can have more characters. And [...]
The book “Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life” has just been released. Following is an excerpt from an Amazon review:
“In Japan and Europe, cellphone usage is higher than in the United States. Thus to an American reader, this book can be interesting on several levels. Perhaps as a sociological commentary on how [...]
Published by Gabriel White.