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Comment by 6t6t6t6 | Hacker News Reader

There's as well a cultural factor that, IMO, affects design as well. This factor is the obsession of the Japanese to show that "they are working hard" and the culture of sacrifice. Everything in the company culture is based on that. People staying until really late at work without actually doing anything productive, meetings scheduled on Saturday just because, etc.

That makes that, when they present a design, it has to look like they worked really hard in the design. That's why there is always so much information.

To the eyes of an executive who has no idea of design (most of them) a minimalist design would look like if the designer was lazy and didn't work hard enough.

Of course, I am exaggerating.... But not a lot.

Source: Working as a Web Developer in Japanese companies in Japan since 5 years ago.

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Hmmm...the work culture fact is undeniable, but no smart person regardless of culture would be impressed or fooled with density as a proof of hard work.... This is probably more related to the highly methodical and intensive approach to optimizing space. Reductionism and efficiency are concepts that the Japanese learn from very early ages. The extreme lack of space and the atomization cities are one of the reasons why the Japanese take density as a standard of life.

> no smart person regardless of culture would be impressed or fooled with density as a proof of hard work

I am far from being a person who has deeply studied Japanese culture (I just happen to live here) but my impression is that it is so ingrained in the mentality that it works at a subconscious level.

Having worked long-term in South Korea, which has a corporate culture very similar to Japan, I'd have to agree with 6t6t6t6. The more "information" you can fit on something, the better. This is taken to the extreme with powerpoint presentations.

I've been here 8 years and worked in IT for several of those. Definitely get the "hard work" ethic, but I feel like your post takes an overly cynical/narrow spin on it.

In my own limited exposure, most designers I have encountered worked by feel and experience instead of analytical principles. I've definitely heard people say that a part of the page feels a bit empty or get some evaluation to that effect from peers. It's much rarer to hear someone say something looks too busy or crowded.

I suspect that in the long grind to "polish your work", there's a simply tendency to remove all these "empty feeling" spots more than to "trim the fat".

This reduced the problem to why there's a bias for things to feel empty instead of busy. To venture a bit of personal sociology here, my experience makes me feel like Japan produces a bias toward more intentional and deliberate behavior. Or worded less charitably, we could maybe call it fussy?

Accepting this idea, in web design we'd expect a bias toward needing deliberate explanations for every aspect of the page layout, including every bit of white space that someone might point out.

> I suspect that in the long grind to "polish your work", there's a simply tendency to remove all these "empty feeling" spots more than to "trim the fat".

I think it's interesting that "Japanese design" in almost every other area hints at a certain functional minimalism, that stands in stark contrast to these sites. I mean sites like, ironically enough, the Css Zen Garden (http://www.csszengarden.com/), highlight the western perception of their design principles: lots of white space, consistent design, minimalism.

White space is luxury for the eyes.

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