From Imitation to Innovation: Chinese Style in Web Design

China is a multi-ethnic nation with a history of 5,000 years of civilization. Its territory and culture extend most of Asia. Hanfeng and Chinese characters are mostly used by Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. China once prospered, and now the door has been reopened to accept the wave, concepts and technologies from the world, including Web technologies. This article interviewed six well-known Chinese designers, tells the history of the Chinese Web design industry from imitation to innovation.

China Web Design: Dongpai

China Web Design Status Quo

We interviewed six Chinese designers from four big cities who talked about the current status and trends of Web design in China:

Guo Yu Baidu former chief designer, now living in Beijing White Crow
UCDChina co-founder, Alipay product designer, now living in Hangzhou Wu Jun Chen
UCDChina co-founder, product manager of Touyou Travel Network, now living in Nanjing, Zhou Wei Art Designer, CK Telecom's UI design director, "UI Evolution - Mobile Device HMI Design", now living in Shenzhen. John Woo
Google China user experience team leader, now lives in Beijing. Rex Song
UCDChina co-founder, Internet product design and architects, now lives in Beijing.

Interviews were conducted over the phone, Skype, and Google Talk. Interviews were sent to them in advance. However, there were some random questions in the actual interviews. In order to let them speak freely, our problem is not limited to Web Design, except Art, CSS, Front End Design In addition, it also involves background design, architecture, design theory, cultural elements, user experience and more.

MFM Moliyo, a game site.

Question: How to treat the status of domestic Web design?

Guo Yu:

Internet users in China account for about 70% of people under the age of 30. They are young, open and receptive to new things. They like to play games and entertain online, so you will find something that attracts sight on many domestic websites to cater to this type of user.

White crow:

About two years ago, we have seen a lot of domestic imitation of the Korean Flash website of the atmosphere, gaudy design has become a trend. But with the advent of Web 2.0, domestic websites started to improve. Users pay more attention to the content than the simple visual effects, the visual effects can not please the domestic users, they want useful content, but also want to provide their own content.

Wu Jun Chen:

Things are getting better and getting better, but a spiral goes up. From the Web knowledge and technology, the domestic designers and foreign at the same level, but they do not really make the best use of this knowledge, for example, user surveys, many designers know very little in the actual design, they know that easy Usability tests, but almost do not.

Zhou 陟:

There are two points. First, budget tensions are common in the domestic Web design market. As a result, web design is ultimately appealing by its visual appeal. It may look good at first glance, but the information structure is not well organized and its usability is very good Second, the domestic Web design is very localized, it should be so.

Domestic Web Design: Midea Microwave Oven

For example, Alipay's success is due to taking into account the psychological and buying habits of domestic users. China is a big country. Some websites are successful because they cater to a specific area. The other side of the question is that Chinese websites are not very internationalized. China is a very large market that can survive even without expanding the international market. As you can see, there are no English versions of UCDChina.com and many domestic sites, or even navigation.

John Woo:

China has not yet formed a unique Web design style, because China is large, Chinese users in many ways are very complex, the domestic look at the domestic Web design will feel very permanent, very fancy, but I think this is a practice. When Flash was stylish, many designers (and their bosses) wanted Flash to make their site attractive. As social networks started to emerge in the United States, designs in China, including Facebook and Twitter, were quickly introduced . When a thing is very practical, many Chinese will borrow it to do it, Baidu, QQ, Taobao is the way to win.

Rex Song:

With a large population and a lot of interests in China, it is also suitable for the field of Web design. As you can see, many domestic websites are very crowded. Designers want to pile everything into one page. On the other hand, most Chinese netizens surf the Internet for fun. Therefore, domestic designers like to make their website fun, social and visually appealing. Just as in 2004, we all imitated the Korean Flash website same.

Shoebox

Domestic Web Design Overview

For the domestic situation of Web design, we can also sum up a few points from the interview.

A lot of Flash: Born in imitation

Flash design has been controversial over the years, in fact, some designers are mainly because of Flash SEO inconvenience. However, during the interview, Flash was again mentioned frequently. Back in 2004, when the Korean website was all Flash, Chinese designers and customers thought that Flash was very fashionable. Rex Song mentioned that in the Flash big-name In the era, you could even spend a little money downloading the full Flash site template directly.

Google is well known for its simplicity, but a bit more subtle differences compared to Google China and Google US:

Google China design more lively than Google USA, adding animated effects, by the way, this effect is first used in Google Korea and Japan website, but later replaced by the kind of static page.

Although its use of Flash comes from imitation, it is now increasingly being used on studios and individual work display websites, new product launch sites, and websites that focus on young people.

Shanghai Vive, an old Shanghai cosmetics brand, is now being rediscovered for high-end cosmetics, which make extensive use of Flash for an elegant and noble life.

Cool Bear Hi, a product line of Great Wall Motors, uses Flash websites to promote new models.

Taking into account the low-speed Internet users, the site when loading Flash, the progress of the display well.

In the process of loading Flash, at different progress, showing different messages to appease the user's waiting, the above is a screenshot of the loading process.

Mian Dian Fang, a ready-to-eat breakfast company, also makes extensive use of Flash on its corporate website. In the animation, steamed buns make morning exercises together to show the company's concept of healthy food.

Below is a screenshot of the site Flash loading progress:

Animation loading process mimics yeast fermentation, increasing the dough until the entire site comes out.

Shoebox, a young domestic shoe brand, the whole station to use Flash to highlight the fashion sense. Sketch pattern, background of old newspaper poses Shoebox concept, taste of life, simple, sport, fashion.

Lenovo Mobile O1 leverages Flash to show Lenovo O1 features and features.

Artlans, an interactive design studio, is mainly a menu button, click button, and language conversion button. Design studios are generally reluctant to use Flash throughout the station, but in some major locations, by Flash to show their Flash skills.

Idea Design, a design studio of design, all using Flash.

Designed for entertainment

We like this one-on-one interview, we can hear different stories from everyone, and we can hear the same story from many people. For example, White Raven, Zhou Qiao, Guo Yu and Rex all mentioned the domestic web design Entertainment tendency, Crow said that when a social network enters China, it must become a game site.

A good example of this is Kaixin's stealing food, and happily borrowing a lot from Facebook in terms of navigation and user interaction, but the difference is that it allows you to run happy farm, build a house, plant vegetables and steal from your friends dish. Some players even record his friends' harvest season in an Excel spreadsheet to steal them in time. The game is the same as a normal game, but embedded in a social networking site where more people can play together. Stole food in the country so popular or even alerted the Ministry of Culture, under pressure, the game is now renamed pick vegetables, pick vegetables in Chinese culture is not so harsh, but players still prefer the more appropriate name, stealing food.

happy farm

Happy pasture

Happy orchard

Recently, this app was added to Facebook but currently only for Chinese users.

Lipton Milk Tea launches a "chain" event that delivers hugs and hugs to your friends via another social network for everyone.

Once you have accumulated a certain amount of points, you can purchase gifts online:

M & M China also used a similar online delivery game to encourage users to come and visit.

I Love G3, China Mobile's promotional 3G network and 3G mobile site, using Flash animation games for users to participate

When you answer a series of questions like, "How do you spend time on the train?", The system analyzes your character and recommends the 3G handsets that are right for you.

3. Designed for click

Unlike Latin and German, Chinese is a hieroglyphic character, and typing Chinese characters on an alphabet keyboard is slow, especially for middle-aged and old-aged users, so you will find many sites in the country crowded with graphic links everywhere, just like Rex What Song says is better. These sites are designed for clicks and are not designed for search (though keyword search is necessary for any informational site).

Yoho, an online shopping site for young people, is crowded with promotional items on the page. Although there is also a search box in the upper right corner, but since there are so many things, simply click on it all the way.

Similarly, China Visual, a visual design portal site, is filled with links to text and images on various sections of the homepage, allowing you to quickly browse the content of your website.

NetEase (that is, 163.com), one of the four major domestic portals, the Chinese-style Web browsing style to the extreme, everywhere is a link.

The picture above is a screenshot of NetEase's homepage. During the writing of this article, it coincides with the Chinese New Year approaching. As you can see, the website uses red as a background, the page is full of news headlines and advertisements, and you can search at the top, but after reading the full page , You probably already know what happened today, if you are interested in a piece of news, just click on it. John Woo said that many websites are now reorganizing their layouts, adding fonts and spacing to improve reading. Sina has been paying attention to revision since the 1990s, and they are getting better and better in this respect.

4. Designed for culture

When asked what the world can learn from Chinese Web design, Zhou said without hesitation: "Culture. China advocates Taoism and we have our own set of values ​​and habits. Web design for the Chinese market should follow the Chinese users' For example, our cultural symbols, calligraphy, and festivals can all be used in web design, but a lake is more than that, but mythology is different.

Indeed, if the myths and feelings of a person are added to a lake, people's perception of it will change.

Pizza Hut China is an example I like to use when it comes to cultural differences. The whole site shows a strong Chinese flavor, from color matching to family themes. Warm red plus yellow is the color of Chinese festivals, while family meals are very much valued in China.

In contrast, Pizza Hut US emphasizes fast food and online ordering. Red is still the subject of Pizza Hut, but harder, darker and colder than China's red.

McDonald's China website is also, the main navigation contains "happy family dinner."

Tong2 Studio, using traditional Chinese colors as background, looks very special.

Six Station, Home Use Chinese ink style Flash to convey creativity and innovation to clients.

Dongpai Design, an interactive design studio, has a small site that uses the Three Kingdoms stories to convey their design philosophy.

Although John Woo points out that borrowing Chinese elements in design is not limited to Web design, he acknowledges the practicality of Web design in China and designers borrow anything they consider useful.

To be continued

The author of this article

This article was written by Kejun Xu and Hendry Lee

Kejun Xu, Information Architect, is dedicated to user experience research; a user researcher who studies user-centered design; and Web usability engineer who translates and is happy to cross-culturally communicate. She designed for the user, her user more easily. She writes blogs occasionally, about UXRnD, or memorizing car parts, as well as loose diamonds.

Henry Lee helps people deal with the challenges of blogging, with blogs, website building, strategies, hosting, social media, web writing, and design on their blogs. Their team can also help individuals or companies create websites, and you too You can meet him on Twiiter.

International source of this article: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/15/showcase-of-web-design-in-china-from-imitation-to-innovation-and-user-centered-design/

Chinese Authorized Translation Source: Sharp Enterprise CMS website content management system official website