Showcase Of Web Design In China: From Imitation To Innovation
China is a country with five thousand years of civilization. It is a multi-national entity extending over a large area of East Asia. China’s cultural influence extends across the continent, with customs and writing systems adopted by neighboring countries including Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
China has gone through numerous ups and downs and twists and turns, from wealthy and prosperous (as during the Tang Dynasty back in 618–907 AD) to powerless and colonized (as during the Qing Dynasty, just around 100 years ago). Now China is reopening its door to the world again, embracing the latest trends, concepts and technologies, the World Wide Web being one of them.
In our interviews with six well-known designers in China, each of whom wears different hats, the recurring theme was that China’s Web design industry is rising like a spiral from imitation to innovation and user-centered design.
Chinese Web Design: Dongpai
State Of Affairs
The designers we interviewed had much to say about the direction of Web design in China, the status quo and trends. The individuals are spread out across four major cities in China, and they are:
- Yu Guo
Former chief designer at Baidu, China’s largest search engine.
Current city: Beijing. - Whitecrow Zhu
Co-founder of UCDChina, and principal product experience designer at Alipay, a subsidiary of Alibaba.
Current city: Hangzhou. - Junchen Wu
Co-founder of UCDChina, and director of products at Tuniu Travel.
Current city: Nanjing. - Lytous Zhou
Visual designer, UI lead at CK Telecom and author of the book UI Evolutionism.
Current city: Shenzhen. - John Woo
Lead of the user-experience team at Google China.
Current city: Beijing. - Rex Song
Freelance information architect; co-founder of UCDChina.
Current city: Beijing.
The interviews were conducted via phone, Skype and Google Talk. Questions were sent to the designers before the interviews to give them context, but the actual interviews were semi-structured. Being interested in the scope of their thoughts, we asked them not to limit their answers to just “Web design.” The designers were told that Web design here refers not only to visuals, CSS and the front end, but also the back end, infrastructure, design rationale, cultural elements, user-experience design and research and so on. We wanted the designers to express their thoughts as openly and as creatively as they wanted to.
MFM Moliyo, a game website.
Question: How do you see the status quo of Web design in China?
Yu Guo: Almost 70% of Chinese Internet users are under 30 years of age. They are young, open, and they adapt to new things quickly. They like to play games online and enjoy looking for ways to entertain themselves online. So, you may see visually attractive elements on many Chinese websites, the purpose of which is to cater to this group of users.
Whitecrow Zhu: About two years ago, we witnessed a huge trend where designers in China were imitating Korean websites in their use of Flash. Flashy and colorful design was once the trend. However, with the introduction of Web 2.0, websites in China are improving. Users are exploring the content as opposed to exploring solely the visuals. Visuals alone do not satisfy Chinese users any more. They are looking for useful and helpful content, and they want to contribute to the websites as well.
Junchen Wu: It’s on an upward trend, getting better and better, but like a spiral. In terms of Web knowledge and techniques, Chinese designers are on par with designers in Western countries, but they have not reached the point of fully utilizing that body of knowledge. An excellent example of this is user research. Many designers know the concept, but they hardly include it in their design practices. They know of usability testing, but they rarely do it.
Lytous Zhou: Well, two points. One, limited budgets are very common in China’s Web design market. As a result, Web design ends up with overwhelming visuals to attract attention. It might be flashy and pretty at first sight, but the information architecture might not be well planned, and usability can be poor. Regarding the second point, Chinese Web design tends to be very localized, as it should be.
Chinese web design: Midea Microwave Oven
For example, Alipay, a byproduct of Taobao, became a successful standalone product because it took into consideration the purchasing behavior and psychology of Chinese users. China is a big country, and some websites are successful because they cater to particular geographical locations. The other side of the coin is that Chinese Web design is not quite international yet. It’s such a huge market and can sustain itself without even reaching out to the international market. You will see that UCDChina.com and a lot of other Chinese websites don’t have English versions, even in their navigation.
John Woo: China has not formed one distinctive Web design style yet, because the country is big, and Chinese users are complicated in many ways. The impression of foreigners of Chinese Web design might be that it is busy and flashy, but I take it as practical. When Flash design was the fashion, many designers (or their bosses) wanted to use Flash to make their Web pages attractive. When SNS was booming in the US, it was soon introduced in China, together with the Facebook and Twitter design styles. When it’s practical and useful, many Chinese people will just borrow the concept and develop it further. Baidu, QQ and Taobao won business and respect this way.
Rex Song: China has a large population, and the saying “the more, the merrier” applies to its Web design. You will see some Web pages that are busy and cluttered, with designers or stakeholders trying to put everything on the page. The other thing is that, currently, the primary motivation to go online for the average web surfer in China is entertainment. So, Web designers in China tend to make their websites play-ish, SNS-ish and visually attractive, as we saw with the popular trend back in 2004 to imitate Korean Flash websites.
Chinese Web Design In A Nutshell
So, do you now have a rough idea of the status quo in Chinese Web design? Although our interviewees tended not to reduce Web design in China to certain patterns, we summarized a few bullet points based on the topics most frequently mentioned in our interviews.
1. Flash-Heaviness: Born of Imitation
Flash design has been a source of constant debates for years. The fact that optimizing Flash objects for search engines can be difficult is a major turn-off for some designers.
However, Flash was called out, and it’s the most frequently mentioned keyword in our interviews. Back in 2004, when Korean websites were all in Flash, Chinese designers and business owners considered Flash the “fashion.” Rex Song mentioned that when this trend was extremely popular a few years ago, you could even download ready-made Korean-style Flash ZIP files from online stores for little money, so that you could do it quick without spending a lot of effort.
Google is renowned for its focus on simplicity. But take a peek at the nuances that distinguish Google China and Google US:
The design of Google China is a bit more vivid than that of Google US, with a hint of animation added to the former to enhance the richness of Google search. By the way, this concept was first implemented on Google Korea and Japan, although both of them have since reverted to a more static interface.
Although Flash implementation began as imitation, it is now increasingly featured in the portfolios of design studios and freelancers, on websites to launch new products and for products geared to the younger generation.
Shanghai Vive is an old Shanghai cosmetics company that is trying to rebrand and attract high-end consumers. Its branding uses Flash heavily, depicting an elegant and high-class life.
Cool Bear Hi, one of the product lines of Great Wall Motor, has a Flash website to promote its new car release.
To accommodate low-speed Internet connections, Cool Bear Hi does a good job of showing the progress of the loading Flash.
The text below the car on Cool Bear Hi changes as more Flash loads. With the chipper text there to assuage visitors, the loading Flash doesn’t seem that boring to watch. Above are a few screenshots we took, and below is what it says at various points in the loading process:
- At 4%: “Choose Cool Bear Hi. Share your happiness.”
- At 22%: “Wear a smiling face every day, and say Hi to everybody.”
- At 41%: “Cool Bear is impatient, ‘Why hasn’t anybody taken me home!’”
- At 70%: “Book a test-drive appoint. Get your special gift and reward points.”
Mian Dian Fang, a ready-to-serve breakfast company, also uses heavily Flash on its corporate website. The animation gives the steam bread and “baozi” a human touch, having them do morning exercises and other activities. The metaphor persuades customers that the company serves a healthy breakfast.
Let’s look at how Mian Dian Fang shows its loading progress:
The loading animation parodies the yeast process: the flour gets bigger and bigger, until you can see a full-blown website.
Shoebox, a shoe brand for the younger generation in China, uses Flash across the whole website to show its grasp of fashion. In addition, the sketched art on the home page and old brown newspaper color for the background set up Shoebox’s philosophy: taste is an attitude of life; start with the simple; fashion is a kind of sport; start with Shoebox.
Lenovo Mobile O1 takes advantage of personalities and embeds their stories in Flash to present the features, functionality and usefulness of its new product, Lenovo O1.
Artlans, an interactive design studio, also uses Flash, especially for its menu buttons, the call to action and the language switcher. Design studios may not want to use Flash all over their portfolios, but rather in a few key places to show their skill at using Flash for clients.
Idea Design, a design studio that uses Flash in full swing.
2. Designing for Entertainment
We really liked our one-on-one interviews because not only did we hear different stories from different people, but we also heard certain other stories from everyone. For example, Whitecrow, Lytous, Yu, and Rex all talked about the “entertainmentalization” of Chinese Web design. “When a social networking website comes to China, it must become a game website,” said Whitecrow.
A case in point is a feature provided by Kaixin.com (Kaixin means “happy”), which recently spurred a social phenomenon in China: “Stealing vegetables.” Kaixin pretty much copied Facebook’s navigation and user interaction. But it’s different in what it allows you to do: set up your “Happy Farm,” build your house, grow your own vegetables and then steal your friends’ vegetables when they are ready to be harvested. Some dedicated players even made Excel spreadsheets to track their friends’ harvest season in order to expedite stealing. It’s like any other video game but embedded on a social networking website, allowing you to play with a wider variety of users. “Stealing vegetables” became so popular that it drew the attention of censors from China’s Ministry of Culture. Under pressure from the Ministry, the game is now called “Picking vegetables,” a less offensive euphemism for mainstream Chinese culture. Online players still prefer the more accurate name.
Happy Farm
Happy Ranch
Happy Orchard
The application was recently added to Facebook, but it is only for Chinese-speaking users at this time.
Lipton Milk Tea features a “Hug Relay” game that you can play right on the website. Hug your friends by validating your account on Renren, another social networking website in China, and gain hug points.
Once you accumulate enough hug points, you can shop on the online store and purchase gifts, an incentive to maintain momentum in the game:
Like Lipton, M&M China also uses an online “relay” game to engage visitors to its website.
I Love G3, a website from China Mobile to promote the 3G network and 3G cell phones, presents an animated Flash questionnaire for users to play around with.
After you have answered a series of questions such as, “How would you kill time on a train?” and “How would you cross the ocean?” the system analyzes your personality and recommends 3G cell phones to match you:
3. Designing for Clicks
Unlike Latin and Germanic languages, Chinese is rooted in hieroglyphic characters. Typing in Chinese on an alphabet-based keyboard can be slow, especially for middle-aged and older users. So, you will see that some website user interfaces are extremely busy: text and image links everywhere—”the more, the merrier,” as Rex Song points out. These websites are designed for clicking, as opposed to searching (although keyword search is an essential component of any information-rich website).
Yoho, an online shopping platform for the younger generation, takes advantage of every sliver of real estate on the page to promote its products. Yes, a search box is in the top-right for you to search, but with all of these images and hyperlinks, it’s more enticing to just click, click, click.
It’s the same with China Visual, a visual design resource portal. The home page presents all sections of the website as text and image links, giving you a quick peek of the content.
NetEase (aka 163.com), one of the largest news portals in China, takes full advantage of the Web reading pattern of Chinese users: i.e. clicking.
Above is a screenshot of NetEase’s home page. The Chinese lunar New Year was approaching when we were writing this article, and you can see that this website uses red, a color symbolic of festivals, for the background. The page is filled with headlines of news and featured articles as well as ad spots. You can perform a search at the top of the page, but by scanning the entire page, you get a sense of what’s happening today. And if you’re interested in any of the headlines, just click—that easy.
All that said, many websites are working to unclutter their UI, increase the font size and line spacing and enhance readability. “Sina.com, if you have been paying attention to its redesigns all the way back to the late 1990s, is doing better and better at information design,” said John Woo, lead of the Google China UX team.
4. Designing for Culture
When asked, “Can the world learn anything from Chinese web design?” Lytous Zhou answered without hesitation: “Culture. The Chinese respect Dao, and we have our own set of values and mores. Websites targeted to the Chinese market should follow the online habits and aesthetics of Chinese users. For example, cultural symbols, calligraphic elements and festivities: all of these could be integrated into a Web design if applicable. A lake may just be a lake, but associating a fairy tale with a lake makes it prettier.”
True, if you add a fairy tale and human touch to a lake, the user’s perception of it would change.
Pizza Hut China, which is an example I like to use every time I explain cultural differences, uses Chinese elements heavily all over its website: in the color scheme and family theme. Warm reds and yellows are colors symbolic of festivity in China, and the family dinner is highly regarded in Chinese society.
By comparison, Pizza Hut US highlights fast food and online ordering on its home page. Red is also Pizza Hut US’ theme color, but it’s more solid, darker and cooler than the warm red on the Chinese website.
Same with McDonald’s China website, where one main menu is dedicated to the “Happy Family Party.”
Tong2 Studio has a unique look and feel with this traditional Chinese floral pattern on its background.
Six Station, whose home page is a Chinese ink and watercolor painting in Flash, opens its creative and innovative mind to clients.
Dongpai Design, an interactive design studio, has an interesting mini-website that borrows from the “Three Kingdom” story (a period of Chinese history) to communicate its design philosophy and values.
While John Woo points out that incorporating national and cultural elements into design is not limited to the Web, he acknowledges the practicality of Chinese Web design—that designers will borrow anything that might be useful to them or their users.
Want An Even Bigger Showcase?
Not enough visuals for you? Here is a whole bunch of more websites to give you a better sense of design in China.
UI Seven
A design studio.
IDT
A personal showcase that records the designer’s 12-year love affair with his girlfriend (now wife) and his own professional growth as the Web evolved during those years.
Youguan Cookies
Also uses Flash animation to promote its product line.
Xin Hongru
An interactive design agency that uses both Chinese elements and Flash to showcase its work.
Thinkpad Edge
A new product line of the Thinkpad laptop.
Moliyo MFM
An online video game website, designed for clicks.
361 Sports
Borrows the theme of the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games for its home page.
Dove Chocolate China
Uses Chinese elements and the lunar New Year to decorate its home page.
BangbangWa
A snack company whose website is rich in games and Flash.
Brain Town
A personal portfolio website.
ShuXia
A platform to showcase the creations of members.
Jossy Jo
A clothing brand.
Apsou
An interactive consulting agency.
Mole Lele
A cartoonist’s personal website.
WEBE7 Enterprise Network Interactive
A portfolio website.
Sanshen Toscana
A real-estate website that relies heavily on Flash.
Wotoon Design
A design agency.
X’mas Tree Workshop
A mini games website where you can create your own Christmas tree and send it as an e-card to your friends.
The GF Space
A design agency.
HAHA DIY
A neat website for DIY home ornaments.
Happy Basket
Designed for clicks.
WuHansoufang
A pretty cool Flash website.
Chateau Junding
A domestic wine brand.
TIIDA
Incorporates a family theme into its Flash design.
Magic Workshop
A kids clothing company, using Flash-animated cartoons to capture the company’s culture.
JJ Ying
A neat personal portfolio website.
Beijing Orange Advertising
A creative showcase website.
Nescafe
Another website rich in both games and Flash.
Yee Chino
A restaurant.
Gold Chino
The sister restaurant of Yee Chino.
Guoguo Diary
A fairly simple but creative personal website.
Rancho Santa Fe
A real-estate developer in Shanghai.
Challenges, Opportunities, Trends
Challenges
When it comes to challenges in the Internet industry, one of the frustrations mentioned by Whitecrow, Junchen, Rex and Lytous is government censorship. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr are all blocked in China because some of their content is considered “inappropriate.” And for compliance purposes, “Sina Microblogging has a team of humans whose job is to censor content, in addition to machine filtering,” says Whitecrow.
The international debate on how free and open the Internet should be is ongoing (see Nussbaum, 2010), and there is still no universal “policy” for the Internet. But without an open environment, China could be impeded from learning from and catching up to other countries.
Still, every coin has two sides. “It limits your freedom,” says Whitecrow Zhu, “but meanwhile, it has a positive effect on UI design and content presentation. There is less room for gimmicks. It forces you to concentrate on useful content and how to present your content.”
The other challenge mentioned by Junchen Wu and Rex Song was the lack of quality educational programs: “Vocational schools might teach you how to use Photoshop and Dreamweaver and how to code in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but they may not teach you design thinking and the logic behind design. The World Wide Web is still young, and at higher-education institutions we have not seen any Information Architecture or User Experience Design degrees yet.”
Our interviews did point to the fact that designers in China have not yet taken full advantage of rigorous research methodologies. Take what Junchen Wu said about the status quo of Chinese Web design: “Many designers know the concept, but they hardly include it in their design practices. They know of usability testing, but they rarely do it.”
And in response to the question, “How do you convince stakeholders that a design is right?” Rex Song brought up the notion of “guanxi” and trust, and he thought the concept A/B and multivariate testing was “Western” and might yield a “low ROI.”
This is understandable on the one hand, because China has a long history of interpretive reasoning, be it Confucianism or Daoism. On the other hand, Chinese Web designers in general have a long way to go in using hard data to back up their design choices.
One might argue that the designer’s job is simply to design, the fact is that you need reasons to support your decisions that affect layout, color scheme, positioning of elements, user interaction and so on. Only “25% of the designers who relied on their personal opinion were right. A research study conducted by the Neilsen Norman Group (2009) concluded that “you’d be better off tossing a coin than asking advice of these people.” This cannot, of course, be said of everyone, but it speaks to the importance of data.
Opportunities and Trends
We were inspired in all six interviews by the discussion of the opportunities and trends in Chinese Web design.
Question: What trends do you foresee in Chinese Web design?
Yu Guo: E-commerce, I would say. Do you know Taobao? Some of my female colleagues have bought soy sauce, pickles and snacks that I’ve never heard of at Taobao. They love it. This is the market in China, and there is demand. I think every company should take advantage of it.
[Authors' note: Taobao is one of the largest shopping platforms in China to connect buyers and sellers of "baobei" (treasures). Out of curiosity, we searched for chocolate on Taobao and found those seasonal truffles that are sold around Thanksgiving and Christmas exclusively at Costco, the largest warehouse membership club in the US.]
Whitecrow Zhu: I think Web design in China is moving towards integrating more and more user-generated content. Douban, an online book and movie club, is a good example. Like YouTube, the majority of the website’s content is user-generated, and it has been pretty successful. Douban existed before YouTube, by the way.
Several years down the line, e-commerce in China will be in full bloom. E-commerce is not tied to any ideology other than simple economics and consumer interest. It has less of a chance of being censored, and people demand it.
Junchen Wu: Creating more value for customers. Listen to what they say, look at what they do, do what they do and think what they think. My belief is that Chinese Web design is getting better and better, in an upward-spiral trend.
Lytous Zhou: Focus on users and your service. I don’t think we’ll see anything unnecessarily extravagant, like crammed content and excessive visuals. Features, functionality, industry standards and meeting customer needs are the trends, I believe. And you’ve got to think outside of the box.
John Woo: Functional, useful and usable. Making websites flashy, with lots of reds and greens, is absolutely unnecessary. Focus on user essentials and user needs. Though not a website, the Tianyu (KTouch) cell phone is very popular in China these days, and I bought six for my family: four with big font display and handwriting input for my parents and parents-in-law, one with 3x optical zoom and an 800 MP camera, and one that looks like lady’s powder case (see picture below). Tianyu was a “Shanzhai” manufacturer but is now a registered company with a pretty good share of China’s cell phone market. Why? It focuses on user essentials and basic needs. Websites are no different.
[Authors' note: "Shanzhai" literally means "villages in the mountain with stockade houses." The use of shanzhai became popular with the outstanding sales of shanzhai cell phones. Although shanzhai companies do not use branding as a marketing strategy, they are known for their flexibility in design to meet specific market needs. Shanzhai cell phones can be sold at prices much lower than normal cell phones. (Wikipedia, 2010)]
Rex Song: In terms of online trends, we will develop our own Web design style using the backdrop of Chinese culture. Formatting-wise, we will be in line with the mainstream world, creating more user-centered designs and offering a better user experience.
Wrapping Up
The Web in China is young, and Chinese designers are playing catch-up. Despite the challenges, we see even more opportunities: smart people, a big market, increasing demand, flexibility and innovative and user-centered design thinking.
On many Chinese websites, we’ve already seen the “upward-spiral trend from imitation to innovation and user-centered design”. Innovation in China is a constant goal. It is being pushed in President Hu Jingtao’s State speech all the way down to classroom curricula. Says Bruce Nussbaum (2009), “To its credit, China has made design a national priority and is pouring billions of yuan into design education.”
Through our interviews, we also collected some resources that our designers would like to share with Smashing Magazine readers (including those in languages other than Chinese).
Events
- UCDChina Book Club Meetups
These monthly meet-ups occur on the third Sunday of every month in China’s eight major cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Xiamen and Chengdu. They set a topic for each month, and club members can borrow the books from UCDChina library and return them at the next meet-up. - UCDChina Annual Conference
The first conference was held in Guangzhou in 2009. It’s free to attend. - UPA China Annual Conference
The UPA China Chapter conference, different from UPA International. The conference is usually held on “Usability Day” every year. - Designer and Developer Front End Technology Forum
A biannual forum for designers and front-end developers in China.
Books, Blogs and Online Resources
- UI Evolutionism
About HCI design on mobile devices, written by local designer Lytous Zhou. - Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things
A classic must-read about design and emotion. - Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions
A book about design patterns for building Web interfaces with rich interaction. - Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
This website was credited by our interviewees as “one of Yahoo’s most important contributions to the design industry.” - Douban
An online book and movie club, mostly user-generated comments and criticism. - iFeng
Phoenix News Media, a new portal. - Since 1984
About design and beautiful things in the world. - Metroer
About reading, including “design reading.” - Mooogu
About industrial and interior design. A good website to find inspiration. - Apple4us
Community blog for tech demos, reviews and ideas. - Ffffound!
An image bookmarking website. - Notcot
For your ideas, aesthetics and amusement. - We Heart It
A website that lets you create an online album from your favorite images and videos. - Core77
Design magazine and resource. - Engadget
A Web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics. - The Design Inspiration
Like its name suggests… - Dbcut
A Korean design community portal.
Your Voice Is Important to Us
What do you think about the Web design in China? We couldn’t cover everything in one post, and we are sure we have missed some perspectives. We look forward to hearing your feedback!
Related Posts
You may be interested in the following related posts:
- Shalom! A Showcase of Web Design in Israel
- Showcase of Web Design in Russia
- Showcase of Web Design in Germany
- Showcase of Web Design in Mexico
- Showcase of Web Design in Ireland
About the Authors
This guest post was written by Kejun Xu and Hendry Lee.
Kejun Xu, an information architect devoted to user experience research; a user researcher dedicated to user-centered design; a usability engineer engaged in making the Web easier to use; and a translator and interpreter who loves inter-cultural communication and bridging people together. She designs for her users, making their lives easier and hassle-free. She blogs once a while, about UXRnD, to record the auto parts and loose diamonds, in case she forgets.
Henry Lee helps people overcome strategic and technical challenges in starting and growing their blogs. Read more of his blog tips, including website building with blog software, strategies, hosting, social media, Web writing, design and more. You can also hire his team at Marketing Loop to build a Web presence for your business or personal website. Stay in touch with Hendry by following him on Twitter.
(al)
mathiz
March 15th, 2010 8:06 amjezzz super cool! very different than the western style!
omfgwebdesign
March 16th, 2010 3:10 pmVery good read. Interesting to think that there are Chinese middle class banging away on keyboards and mouse clicks, trying to get one symbol into one frame and code the AS just right.
You can do more with flash. You can get closer to a profound visual experience. So what if Flash sucks for SEO? You get a better site, a better brand experience, an improved overall experience of the web…if it’s slow for you, your computer sucks. Evolve or die.
Their typefaces look different, but they look just like western websites. There isn’t a big cultural difference, other than the visual elements.
I want to know about web sweatshops!!!
Website Design
April 5th, 2010 2:03 pmWas in the design biz in Beijing for 6 years and it’s a very different market. I found 9 out of 10 local Chinese companies did not see value in professional designs. Most customers were foreign companies entering China who expected the same design principles as in the US. Not one out of hundreds of clients requested flash only sites.
AllWebUsa
November 15th, 2010 7:49 pmYes very cool, i like Chinese designers. I think WEBE7 Enterprise Network Interactive is one of the best one.
Best regards
sebastian
March 15th, 2010 8:11 amso I guess China will prevent Flash from dying? :P
Great showcase, thanks SM
Kevin
March 15th, 2010 11:11 amHeh! My thoughts exactly. I HATE Flash-heavy sites… one of the links above took about a minute to load up on a very wide connection to the internet.
J Pancras Gomez
March 16th, 2010 3:28 amA lot of flash stuff YES. Flash may not die after all. There is a lot of character stuff happening on the sites. Good to see a different set of designs. Cool stuff.
Kejun
March 16th, 2010 8:49 pmSorry about the wait.
Well, Flash serves its purposes in many ways. Many Flash sites are aesthetically pleasing. From the psychological perspective, people like beautiful things. They stir our emotion, whether we are aware of it or not. And many humans beings’ decision making are outside of our consciousness. I am not going to expand about this but there are lots of research out there talking about emotional design.
In addition, for product promotional sites that cater for the younger generation or whose target audience/users may like motions and interactions, Flash is not a bad choice.
So emotional design and product intent, or product requirement.
Although I don’t deny the fact that some Chinese and Korean websites sorta abuse the use of Flash and make their websites flashy and slow, which is not a good use of their developers’ time, and users’ time.
Nestor Sulu
November 28th, 2011 10:18 pmUnfortunately seems like that, and not only Flash but also IE6.0, so we western web designers in China still have a difficult life for years to come :(
joel
March 15th, 2010 8:13 am能看见国人的东西不容易,加油!
Sunny Kumar
March 15th, 2010 8:21 amNice Collection !
zibin
March 15th, 2010 8:23 am强，继续加油！亚洲支持你！
beiqiu
July 20th, 2010 12:23 am一不小心 看到子斌了 哈哈
phil05
March 15th, 2010 8:27 amhey,
very interessting guest posting. I love articles like this. Thanks for all the showcases of international webdesign, this helps alot to get an impression of WORLDWIDE web!
greetings
lisa
March 15th, 2010 8:33 amAbsolutely need to support this article as a Chinese. Good job!
MrUndo
March 15th, 2010 8:37 amOnce again a very nice, inspiring post..
Love how you’ve taken websites from all kinds of industries and how you’ve compared some Western style website with Chinese websites.
And, wow! The NetEase website. I really dislike such sites, but it seems to be typical Asian style to design in such style for content-heavy website with loads of links.
Cyril quatrepointzero
March 15th, 2010 9:10 amGreat showcases
It’s a nice way for discovering website design from all over the world,
Keep up the good work. ,
Paula is QuiteCurious
March 15th, 2010 9:52 amGreat showcase! It’s always interesting to see websites from other countries. Props to Chinese designers for using Chinese characters on the web – it looks tough to design with characters that need to have a large minimum type size (or am I wrong?)
justinyoung
March 15th, 2010 6:08 pm是的，汉字不能使用过于小的字体（小于9px），否则会看不清楚，这的确是个问题。
Yes, you are right, We can not use font-size smaller than 9px。It’s a problem。
yantian
March 15th, 2010 7:56 pm有几个宋体(pmingliu or 细明体)可以设置到11像素，但已经是最小的用法了，再小就看不清楚了。
There are several songti(pmingliu or MingLiu) can be set to 11 pixel, but has the smallest usage, and then the small is not see clearly.
riant
March 23rd, 2010 9:09 amfor Simsun（宋体）, I have to use 12px, I think this is the smallest font-size.
Darryl Snow
March 15th, 2010 10:44 pmNot only that, Chinese web-typography is extremely limited by the fact that the fonts are so large (having to accommodate at least 4000 individual characters). This means that there are really only 2 “web-safe” fonts (the equivalent of ‘serif’ and ‘sans-serif’… one is bold and blocky, the other is thin and has small flourises at the end of some strokes) which you can be sure everyone will have installed on their computer. The size of the font files makes any sort of font-replacement method unfeasible.
No matter what size they are displayed, the on-screen characters always appear ugly (especially on windows machines) and can never do justice to what is (or at least should be) an extremely beautiful and creative form of writing. If you look at traditional Chinese calligraphic paintings you can see that they conform to all the principles of good design, conveying the content so clearly and elegantly, and yet this cannot easily be transposed onto the web. This is yet another reason why Chinese web designers choose to use so much flash, so that they can incorporate custom-designed type.
Hector Hurtado
March 15th, 2010 10:05 amVery interesting article, thank you SM! My wife and I are in the process of relocating to Asia, so as designers, this article came right on time.
As a “Western” designer, I really liked the Chinese approach of branding through culture. This should be more widespread in the West, where it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate one country from the next. People are in search of identities tied to their perimeter, and the idea of linking modern information to historical or fantasy-related facts is a big plus.
Alex
June 1st, 2011 5:47 amHi Hector! We are entering a Chinese market with a new project and would be interested in cooperation with you as a web designer. Will you please mail me.
indigo
March 15th, 2010 10:06 amThis is a brilliant article. A great read for this evening, thanks to all the authors and SM team!! I love you :)
I also think there are many beautiful websites presented in this showcase. To me [not a designer] Chinese web design is distinctive and different from others I’ve seen through this SM’s post series. I would say it’s more vivid and kind of cheerful.. many websites are rather cluttered, or maybe I’ve been spoiled by minimalist websites that have been on the wave lately.. not sure :) Yes, I see the heavy use of Flash, but as long as flash website loads fast (as most of them do today) I see nothing wrong with this. Thanks again for the post guys, I enjoy learning more about World WILD Web :)
Kejun
March 15th, 2010 8:43 pmThanks indigo for the thorough comment. East or west, a lot of designers whom I talked to like minimalism design. But I guess when it comes to putting the design into wires and visuals, it really depends on the business requirement and your stakeholders. You may use user research to change your stakeholders’ mind but if the business case requires cluttered design, we might then need to design for it. Take a look at msn news, google news, ebay, AOL, they are all busy, at different degrees. Then designers’ job is to uncluttered it using better layout, more meaningful navigation and information design.
Just my two cents.
David Kaplan
March 15th, 2010 10:18 amNice stuff. But, since people were so gracious as to point out Israel’s political misgivings on another, similar regional post, I’d like to point out the same with China – arguably the biggest human rights violators on Earth.
David Kaplan
ErickJones
March 15th, 2010 10:19 amI love chinese art…
Aidan
March 15th, 2010 10:19 am走出中国，感动世界！Step out of China and inspired the World.
亚洲之光！加油！
anonymous (berlinerin)
March 15th, 2010 10:44 am牛b!
But,
“Chinese is rooted in hieroglyphic characters. Typing in Chinese on an alphabet-based keyboard can be slow”
Chinese isn’t really hieroglyphic / pictographic, though some older characters are or are derived from. And character entry on an alphabet keyboard can be very fast depending on the input method. Even a standard mobile phone it’s possible to enter all common characters with only six keys.
And…
Chinese women designers?
(Yes, I’m complaining about this again.)
Smashing Editorial
March 16th, 2010 2:36 amNo worries, we are preparing two articles about women in the web design industry, so please just stay tuned.
Le Marquis
March 15th, 2010 11:00 amGoogle is considering leaving China because of the many demands China had for Google. China is unwilling to do any concessions for the search engine. It looks like china looses the war on censorship on it’s searchengines.
Kejun
March 15th, 2010 11:10 amThanks guys for the compliment! I appreciate that!
To Berlinnerin, yes it’s fast for tech savvy and frequent web surfers in China to enter Chinese characters at keyboards but if you do a little bit of user research, it’s not the case for the average users esp. middle aged and seniors. (My dad goes online but he doesn’t type fast.)
You know what, I was trying hard to locate a female designer but there are so few I can select that have web presence…
Dzinepress
March 15th, 2010 11:42 amcreative design inspirations from chines designer’s gallery.
ali hong kong
March 15th, 2010 11:47 amI’d love to see a resource for good typographic practices when building Chinese HTML sites. If you know any, drop me a line at twitter.com/the1stretch !
Gosone
March 15th, 2010 12:00 pmWe are Design for CHINA: http://www.gosone.com
Mosey
March 15th, 2010 12:03 pmOh wow – I really enjoyed reading this post thanks! I’ve only really used Baidu and Taobao extensively, and always wondered why Flash was so prominently used on other websites (this isn’t just a phenomenon in China as other Asian countries like to do the same thing it seems) but the interviews with such prominent designers have been a great insight into it all.
Thanks.
Ruby
March 15th, 2010 12:13 pmA great read. I’d also like to point out that traditional advertising in Asia takes this flashy, colorful approach and it looks like the web in Asian countries merely took what has been practiced for years. Just walk around any large Asian city and notice the busy, cluttered ads that plaster the walls and the commercials on TV. The preferred minimalist “Web 2.0″ look just wouldn’t stand out!
Aaron
March 15th, 2010 12:17 pmGreat article.
aaron
March 15th, 2010 12:20 pmreally great article!
Smashing Editorial
March 15th, 2010 3:09 pmReally great comment ;-) Thank you, aaron.
Bijan
March 15th, 2010 1:15 pmInteresting to see the cultural differences concerning design. I am a big fan of simplicity in webdesign. Many presented chinese sites are very colorful. Too colorful for my personal taste but thanks for this interesting compilation :)
Do you others also feel that the chinese characters feels somehow bumpy?
alfredo
March 15th, 2010 1:51 pmIt’s amazing how some designers from western countries feel threatened when they see this kind of awesome designs and start complaining about heavy use of flash, lots of colors, etc… or like the last post about israel when people wrote more comments about palestine than about the designs, I wonder who will be the first one to write about tibet or stuff like that in this case… anyways, great designs… congrats to chinese designers!!
by the way, I’m from mexico city
Enfance
May 27th, 2010 4:31 pmnot really, I, as a Chinese, hate browsing Chinese website because they are web pages are so clustered. I love the minimalistic approach I learned in western design. ;)
web for half
March 15th, 2010 1:59 pmGuys ….. your creativity is amazing ….
nick Burd
March 15th, 2010 2:20 pmI’m digging these designs!
This is a huge collection, must have taken quite a while to come up with.
Thank you.
eddywang1988
March 15th, 2010 2:29 pmNB 终于上SMASHING 首页了。。我国的FLASH文化果然够NB。。我们绝对不必鬼佬差！！
LifeOnLars
March 15th, 2010 3:30 pmGreat article, very interesting to see the differences and similarities in design trends. Any chance we could be seeing a similar article for trends in web design in Japan?
Cre8ive Commando
March 15th, 2010 4:05 pmInteresting article. Btw, Taobao is awesome! :-)
hanjiyun
March 15th, 2010 4:58 pm豆瓣观光团到此一游
看了这么久欧美设计，这次终于看见中国人自己的了。作为一名网页设计师，我很欣慰。
中国加油！
10V
March 15th, 2010 5:07 pm特地从google reader中发来贺电…加油！！
sundyme
March 15th, 2010 5:08 pm中国的webdesigners是网上非常活跃的一个群体，关于以用户为中心的设计，他们已经有了一些很有价值的思考，中国的webdesigners，加油！
Len
March 15th, 2010 5:15 pm很高兴看到我们公司的设计，非常感谢。
suoniker
March 15th, 2010 5:21 pm能看到中国的设计，支持一下~~~！
神飞
March 15th, 2010 5:36 pmamazing.
Justin Carroll
March 15th, 2010 5:37 pmIncredible, masterful collection! 5-stars. And super inspiring! Some of this stuff reminds me of my friend, jR’s work … Progressive One
Thomas Xu
March 15th, 2010 5:42 pmHi,I am a Chinese UE designer, I think this article could help us reconsider our design methods and the importance of testing.Anyway, great article, thanks!
justinyoung
March 15th, 2010 5:57 pm看了这么久，就这篇文章看着亲切呀。
kindle
March 15th, 2010 6:06 pmamazing !!!
5key
March 15th, 2010 6:08 pm淘宝店铺都有，强的！
Junghae
October 27th, 2010 7:49 pm呵呵 :D
winglua
March 15th, 2010 6:08 pm呵呵 同样很期待韩国和日本的设计专题
Michael Wang
March 15th, 2010 6:10 pmI love Chinese ink and watercolor painting .
Kejun
March 15th, 2010 6:23 pmI would love to read other Asian countries’ showcases too. We originally wanted to do the whole Asia showcase but ended up only doing China. It’s so hard to speak for another country whose language is not your native tongue.
viking
March 15th, 2010 6:25 pm特地从google reader发来贺电
加油 中国web design
jmax
March 15th, 2010 6:48 pmvery , very ,very impressive ~~~~~
ZhongdeLiu
March 15th, 2010 6:53 pmThis is a very nice article. Thanks for writing and publishing it!
写的非常好，真的有意思！ 谢谢你。
sherry
March 15th, 2010 7:22 pmso glad to see this article.thanks! i think it’s very usefull for both chinese and western desingners.
TT
March 15th, 2010 8:03 pmVery very interesting, I saw my company works. oh!!!
Cheering China!!!
JEFF
March 15th, 2010 8:08 pmOH SEBASTIAN HOW DO YOU DO IT?
eddie yang
March 15th, 2010 8:13 pm哇 终于轮到天朝了
Flo
March 15th, 2010 8:35 pm非常好的文章！ Great article guys! I have been spending the last 10 months researching this exact topic for my Masters degree… its been an amazing time, even got to go to Shanghai twice for the practical part: i designed a Chinese culturally adapted website for a New Zealand company in Shanghai.
Brilliant people, brilliant country, brilliant design!
Flora
March 15th, 2010 8:46 pmThe first time ,I found lots of Chinese designer are here ~~另，豆瓣改版了：）~~
wanglei
March 15th, 2010 9:06 pm其实还是中国字好看。
DesignFellow
March 15th, 2010 9:31 pmWonderful… Very colorful & Spicy as chinese food…..
:)
Kejun
March 15th, 2010 9:43 pmIt’s a “Aha” moment. ^_^
Seriously I wasn’t aware of the correlation at all!
丁子
March 15th, 2010 9:32 pm终于看到熟悉的页面了，留言记录
chuan
March 15th, 2010 9:36 pm整的不错
Jamal Nasir
March 15th, 2010 9:41 pmHi nice collection, check out my personal portfolio and send me email with comments on that portfolio.jamalnasir.com/
coledodo
March 15th, 2010 10:03 pmnice article!
James
March 15th, 2010 10:31 pmGreat article and a topic that really hits close to home. I currently work as an art director for a design agency in Taiwan – the “renegade province” considered to be part of the mainland depending on your political views. I’m often asked by friends and colleagues back home (in California) what challenges we face in working in the creative industry here and whether there were opportunities for them to tap into the greater China market. I think this article provides great insight in answering a lot of these questions – especially in the interviews with the Chinese designers.
Chris
March 15th, 2010 11:05 pmGreat article.
I just want to add that flash is good solution for chinese web . There are 2 reasons:
1. Typography – there is no much choice in terms of system fonts. I dont think anybody uses more than 1. And sorry to say this – bold, italic, too small chinese font – looks like crap…
2. IE6 is still pain in the ass . On some of my websites 70% users browsing with IE ( 50% of that is IE6) – so sometimes is just easier to make everything in flash
Darryl Snow
March 15th, 2010 11:27 pm顶!
Darryl Snow
March 15th, 2010 11:22 pmI think you really hit the nail on the head with this article. The ‘Chinese web’ is all about flash and is all aimed specifically to engage Chinese users.
What is difficult to grasp for many Western readers is that I think the way people engage the internet in China is soooo different in many ways. As the article points out, the vast majority of Chinese internet surfers aren’t looking for goods/services/information but rather games, entertainment, and social interaction.
It can be frustrating when you’re searching on Baidu for something simple like local cinema listings and sudenly you’re not faced with a webpage for your local cinema but rather endless blogs or BBS pages with extremely cryptic URLs containing a wholly unmemorable mix of numbers and letters.
Chinese people are less likely to have their own personal websites on http://www.myname.com but will go for pages on blog rings like sina or msnlive. They will also rarely engage with any western websites but rather have the option of using a Chinese immitation (usually a carbon-copy… see http://www.yupoo.com ) where there is a demand for that service.
The 2 main limitations of the ‘Chinese web’, in my opinion, do not have anything to do with the censorship, which barely affects any one in China (why would they want Facebook when they have Kaixin? Why would they want Twitter when they have Zuosha and Fanfou? etc.) to the point that few people are even aware of it. No the main limitations are, as I said in a previous comment, the typography – ‘web-safe’ Chinese fonts can never do justics to such a beautiful form of writing that could potentially be used so creatively. The other HUGE limitation is the prominence of IE6… which I obviously need not go on about. These limitations in themselves drive Chinese designers/developers to rely more on flash as a cross-browser and creatively flexible option. Oh and excellent point about the lack of education programmes as well… hadn’t though of that.. that’s another big limitation :p
Having personally worked as a web designer with various Chinese agencies for many years, I have seen little progress towards more user-friendly, standards-compliant, cross-browser compatible front-end markup I’m afraid to say. The emphasis is still very much on sticking with the status quo in terms of static html pages that resemble those we would have seen in the West in the late 90s, only serving IE users (for instance try doing any online banking or shopping in China without IE…), or otherwise going all out with flash.
There are universal design principles that I don’t think can be ignored or justified by saying ‘the page is designed for clicks’. Glaring colours, distracting animation, poor navigation, poor content layout, bulky and non-semantic code… These are all things that serve to make a webpage less usable no matter what language it’s in or what culture it’s geared towards. Sina.com, qq.com, 163.com etc. have barely improved over the last 10 years and still remains a very ugly and hard-to-use site… they remain popular due only to market dominance. Try testing someone to find something on any of those pages that they wouldn’t normally look for and you’ll see them straining their eyes.
While I enjoy making flash sites and I often see some really impressive flash-work coming out of Chinese agencies, I can’t help but suspect it must be frustrating for so many people, possibly in busy internet cafes or rural areas, who must endure the slow load times.
Hopefully this hasn’t sounded like a long rant… if so here’s a positive example of a well-designed non-flash ‘cluttered’ page that is presented in a clear and friendly way, with smart typography. It’s a forum to connect freelance designers and design agencies with clients and shows off some fantastic work from Chinese designers.
http://www.toidea.com/
中国加油！
Kejun
March 16th, 2010 9:16 amThanks for sharing your thoughts. It was very well thought and written.
Considering the fact that,
1. the thoughts of these designers I interviewed may not represent all of designers’ thinking in China;
2. it were semi structured interviews and I was the only person to do the data analysis and there wasn’t any inter coder reliability guarantee;
3. I see it as a qualitative study and the sample size is not statistically significant,
this article provides the insights to those well known designers in China, but it’s really the readers’ responsibility to judge if they want to generalize the findings to the greater application.
Thanks again and your comments were very informative!
elrond
March 16th, 2010 9:53 pmI agree with Darryl.
‘the page is designed for clicks’ is really bad.
I always browse taobao.com which offers tons of stuff at affordable price however it is almost impossible to find something without using search function so…why does the designer put thousands of link and flashy banner on the homepage?
Kejun
March 16th, 2010 10:12 pmBut you cannot deny the fact that there is a group of users who would like to see these mass category links and well designed pretty banners. It’s an alternative way way of browsing information in addition to search. In usability, you want to offer different ways to look for the same information. Some people think linearly and some are exploratory.
Also there are marketing needs behind the scenes. I am sure by tagging these banners you can get all the way to revenue.
Just my $.02:)
Jesse
March 15th, 2010 11:34 pmI am really excited to see such article about webdesign in my homeland! But in fact, many outstanding designers have not been mentioned. you may find them at 68design.net/Interview
Mr. Giải Pháp Số
March 15th, 2010 11:37 pmWow! Very cool!
Fancy
March 16th, 2010 12:01 am这个必须顶！！！
alexey
March 16th, 2010 12:02 am看到国人做的如此好，很HAPPY。
有些想法： 如果能多加些中国风的东西效果更佳。
比如， 书法，水墨，中国结，剪纸等元素。
呵呵， 个人想法~~
Kalix Glenn
March 16th, 2010 12:05 amGreat article!!
Although I’m Chinese, I’m a fan of simplicity or minimalist. Anyway, I now understand why most of the web site in China are flashy and some sites are overwhelmed visuals and contents.
Patrik
March 16th, 2010 12:07 amInteresting style with a lot of detail in some of them!
Most of them are a bit too flashy for my taste – but I’ll guess thats just the way things work on the other side of the world :)
Yuri
March 16th, 2010 12:08 amNice looking websites, but EXTREMELY slow!
Darryl Snow
March 16th, 2010 12:13 amThey’re usually much faster if you’re in China :p
but still yeah… big flash sites are always going to be relatively slow.
杨浩
March 16th, 2010 12:15 amSM加油~
Grzegorz
March 16th, 2010 1:18 amAwsome! :)
I can’t wait for Pland. We got heiz :)
Anish
March 16th, 2010 2:38 amExtreme professionalism n all designs….. Good Work guys
Kelga Creations
March 16th, 2010 2:53 amAwesome stuff! I’m a multimedia designer and Asian too. But never thought how different Chinese web designs are compared to Western web designs just with the difference in culture. This article points it out nicely and very informative!
volcanono
March 16th, 2010 3:36 am含泪飘过，smashingmagazine 上第一次见china design 希望以后会越来越有影响力
liebesich
March 16th, 2010 3:51 amNice examples.
BloveFeather
March 16th, 2010 3:58 am成长的过程。
allan
March 16th, 2010 4:20 am头一次看到国人的作品，很是骄傲。
This is the first time to see my chinese guys’s works here, well done!
齐鲁数据
March 16th, 2010 4:56 am让亿万网民淹没这里吧 竟然发现了国产的.
中国的皇帝
March 16th, 2010 5:30 am显示您的山雀、 中国女孩 ！
Hans
March 16th, 2010 5:47 amThat Kaixin game seems almost identical with a similar farm game on the japanese mixi social network. Anyone knows if the two sites are related to each other in some way..?
moonjeep
March 16th, 2010 6:01 amThank you for introducing Chinese web design to the western world. I’m from Blueidea.com, a web site and forums for professional web designer and developers in China for over twelve years. You may check the url below: http://home.blueidea.com/apps.php?do=case and http://home.blueidea.com/apps.php?do=pages to find more awesome designs from China. I hope I’ll see more articles from you to present Chinese web design on Smashing Magazine. If there’s anything I can help, you got my mail. :)
Kejun
March 16th, 2010 5:46 pmThanks for sharing. Unfortunately I don’t. SM does I believe.
elya
March 16th, 2010 6:06 am我激动，留下足迹……
不得不说分析的不错……
Origin Ideas
March 16th, 2010 7:59 amSuperb! 太正啦！虽然我不是来自中国，但太亲切啦！
adelacreative
March 16th, 2010 8:22 amvery comprehensive! thanks
Carl Rosekilly
March 16th, 2010 9:09 amInteresting article and an interesting insite as to how the web works differently in the Eastern world to the West.
Inspiring!
webnation
March 16th, 2010 5:22 pmWell Done! guys. the title says it all.
good on all chinese designers.
支持国人!
Jade
March 16th, 2010 5:27 pm中国的，我骄傲啊！为我们所有的设计师叫好！
fruitfan
March 16th, 2010 5:37 pm看着感觉很亲切啊~继续关注~~学习之
Mark
March 16th, 2010 7:05 pmI really hate Flash-based site with no meaningful at all, but slow experience. I am living in China and a native Chinese. These sites just suck as they are though our culture and characters are great.
iCan
March 16th, 2010 7:07 pmGreat!
I will work harder for CHINA DESIGN!
rupam
March 16th, 2010 8:29 pmGood Works of Chinese designers.
Thanks for the post.
Regards
Rupam
anshu
March 16th, 2010 9:09 pmWow! Gr8 article.. Thanks :)
姜佳妮
March 16th, 2010 9:40 pm加油！总有一天我的设计也能显示在这里！
I’m proud of being a chinese,I’m proud of being a chinese designer. FIGHTING!
ddong
March 17th, 2010 12:01 am哈哈 中国的web designer 加油！
nir
March 17th, 2010 12:11 amsome really great designs.
i don’t like heavy flash use, but they do some awsome websites.
keep bringing us more showcases…
Pon
March 17th, 2010 12:14 amThis comment was deleted due to offtopic.
eva
March 17th, 2010 12:20 amweb designer come on!
wwzboy
March 17th, 2010 2:22 am中国原创设计加油。
landseer
March 17th, 2010 2:39 amas a matter of fact, chinese portal sites contain too much typographical characters. it seems annoying. personally, i don’t like it.
现代魔法
March 17th, 2010 2:46 amVery Good Job ，中国设计