What would you associate this image with?
Image from Japanese website http://www.utu-net.com
When I wrote my master thesis at the IT University of Copenhagen back in 2008, I did so on the basis of a case study for a subsidiary of a Danish company in Tokyo. The purpose of my case study was to find out how to localize a web user portal for the Japanese market. My initial point of interest was whether it was possible to design user interfaces for a different culture than one's own, simply by referring to a 'check list' of how users in the country preferred their websites to look. My hypothesis was that it wasn't.
In academia, the study of this is a sub-area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) called Cultural Usability. This area references, among other things, HCI and usability theory, which again references psychology, and theory on cultures and the differences between them. There is a lot of research on the preferences of Asian users in web design, many of them stating that 'Asians prefer lots of visuals, flashing images and colors', and that there are certain colors that should be used and some that shouldn't, etc.
My findings were, that while this can be true on a general level, it does not guarantee a successful website for a company that wants to make an online appearance in a new market. To do so, it takes a lot of networking and teaming up with local ressources, simply to create a context that rings true to local users. A simple translation of content will not do - if language is not translated in accordance with local context, it can come off as unreliable to the users that you want to target. And if you are a big business that wants to succeed in an Asian market, you can use as many flashing images and colors as you like, but if you don't use it correctly to signal that you can be the next serious business partner, you are likely to be perceived as untrustworthy.
Back to the image that I started with: To me, in a Danish context, I would associate this with something playful for children, maybe a company that sells toys or children's clothing, or a web portal for parents of toddlers. It is actually taken from a Japanese website dealing with serious issues such as depression, anxiety, and OCD.
Explanation? When I interviewed Japanese respondents, they expressed that if they were to seek internet advise on depression, they would want to see something 'cheery' and kawaii (as they, according to CNNGo, also use as a means to recover after this years' devastating earthquake). They thought that the Danish site that I showed them looked 'gloomy' and 'official', and they could not understand why you would want to share such a serious issue with strangers online - they would turn to their doctor or close family instead.
How do you succeed with online content in other markets? By paying attention to all three levels of building a succesful site: Context, Content, and Design.
