Japanese platform transformation
Experience Design at Hugo & Cat
A DIFFERENT VIEW
Researching cultural and lifestyle differences alongside translating and distilling insights from market and user testing papers provided by Sony HQ helped to create a picture of the consumers we were designing for.
To understand how the Japanese platform worked we conducted a full site and content audit and mapped the user journeys using funnel data. Studying the regional competitors and how their journeys worked, honoring Jakob's law, enabled us to identify trends in Japanese consumer behaviours.
It was clear that the Japanese and the Global platforms differed completely due to Japanese UX design patterns and cultural influences.
CULTURAL
Advertising in Japan is visually stimulating which is designed to grab your attention and they use cultural references such as J-pop and Anime. This is also reflected across many other websites.
BRAND TRUST
Interestingly, it is common that users expect a lot more information on a product before they purchase in order to trust the brand itself. This results in long arduous user journeys, a large amount of content and tougher legal requirements around selling a product.
A GENERATIONAL SHIFT
Younger generations are more open to minimal western design patterns with less information because they consume European and American media, fashion, and websites.
sony.jp
INITIAL EXPLORITORY DESIGNS
As the initial phase of a complete redesign, we started by optimising a few key journeys around product discovery.
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Site search function and product discovery experience.
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Product browsing experience including the Listing Page, Product tiles, Search, and Sort by tools.
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A search tool that elevates the Global platform is the Select to Compare feature so we created some preliminary designs to present to HQ for the Japanese platform.
SOME KEY CONSIDERATIONS
LANGUAGE AND CONTENT
Text required a lot more space once it had been translated to Japanese so creating designs that fit content was a challenge. A good example of this was trying to shorten the length of the Product Tiles.
RE-POSITIONING CONTENT
The user journeys were very long and complex and used a just-in-case approach to content. We wanted to simplify the journeys with a just-in-time approach by surfacing content on relevant pages throughout the journey while still providing enough information for the Japanese consumer.
NEXT STEPS
The next phase was to bring the site structure and menu navigation closer to the Global platform.
Homepage exploration and other sets of journeys such as Checkout and Sony membership also needed to be evaluated.
Sony is one of the largest global electronics brands. They wanted us to explore how we could update and merge their Japanese web platform with their newer global platform.
Extensive cultural research and user journey analysis were conducted to understand how this audience behaved and shopped. The challenge lay in the different cultural norms and expectations.
The aim was to work with Sony HQ in Japan to develop some preliminary designs that created a synergy between the two platforms without hindering the user experience for a Japanese audience.
HOW WE MADE IT HAPPEN
Research and Discovery
Creative Design
Data and Analytics
