Designing for the Japanese consumer

Alexander English School is a Tokyo based language school which prides itself on its friendly family environment. To refresh and introduce a contemporary element into the school’s current web identity, I restructured and developed a responsive website providing students with easy access to information across any devices. One of the main challenges was to design the website for the mind-set of a Japanese consumer.

Stepping into the user’s mindset

Due to cultural differences, Japanese consumers tend to require a high degree of assurance before making final purchasing decisions. That is why you may notice that many websites have a large volume of content to the point where it appears “messy” (for example, the E-commerce giant Rakuten’s Japanese website). With this in mind, it was important for the design to show all the necessary content but at the same time be easily navigable and user friendly.

NEW ILLUSTRATIONS

A new colorful and bright illustration style was applied to compliment the personality of the school.

Client