As a Chinese, I deeply hate this over-designed UI/UX trend in China. Many of those fancy colorful widgets and buttons are actually slowing down my poor phone (not to mention the disgusting shakey ADs). More importantly, most of those functions are not part of the core app! Imagine you can complete lending services in almost any application, even in Chinese Uber! These buttons are actually like many micro clickbaits hoping to attract your precious attention. SIn this case, every app in my phone take up more than 3-4 Gb of storage even if I barely use them, and WeChat app is actually can be over 50-100 Gb in someone's phone! So I changed my phone language in to English for a purer experience and less-noisy UI.
Yea this is also one disadvantage of a monopolized app market structure, where the market leader is trying to pull everyone , but in some sense creates trash for another individual. This can create a notion where more is less 🤷♂😁
Yeah, I’ve tried some apps that try the combo experience, like Outlook Mail+Calendar, Snapchat Messaging+Tiktok Clone, YT Shorts+Long form+music player, etc, and they all do one thing well at most. I like having a single inbox for email, but my university email (outlook exchange) has next to zero compatibility and blocks every client. Outlook Mail lacks a proper refresh button, most TikTok clones dilute and clutter the experience of an app while adding very very little value (I’ve never seen a Snapchat story highlight promoted that isn’t spam or awful, although the Snap Map is nice). Facebook is terrible for trying to see actual content (no moderation and lots of AI), but it has a nice system for buy sell groups. Like, maybe Chinese companies just QA test their apps a lot more than western companies, but whenever I see an app that does more than one thing, it usually still only does one thing well. If anything, the lack of tactility is more of an annoyance to me than having to switch apps (especially since iOS rarely allows multi instancing apps, a super app would probably be hard to multitask with) (although I acknowledge that it could be different for a online culture more used to smartphones over PCs). I think if I wanted a super app like combo experience, I’d rather just be able to install mods or plugins to add those features. Edit: I hate overly minimalist designs too ofc, since they require a lot more to navigate. My ideal is probably just being able to hide superfluous icons, but also having everything laid out accessibly
Indeed. Especially when phone prices rack up when you get one with larger storage size, this would be quite unideal. Any ideas for how to workaround this?
As a westerner I prefer Chinese app design. The apps we've got here are not necessarily simpler, if anything, precisely because everything is NOT on the same page, it's usually hard to find and navigate. I like when I open Chinese app or website and I have everything on the main page and don't need to swipe or look for it in weird places.
@@samuelboczek1834 you joking right. There is a reason why folders are made. It's to separate things which makes it easier for us to find them later. If everything is at 1 place then everything is hard to find
'Cos it is a de facto OS. All the various functionalities (save chat, payment and insta-like videos and posts) come from installing the so-called mini-apps, which instead of being installed on Android from the Play store or the Baidu store, they are installed from the Wechat store that sits within the Wechat app. It's like the Java Runtime Environment, but on steroids.
@@phoebeyutbt Operating systems are essentially the original "super apps." They allow integration of various features and applications (payments, messaging, and shopping). When someone claims that an all-in-one app is a novel concept, we long had this functionality in the form of OS.
Funny thing is that many western apps in the late 90s and early 2000s also had cluttered designs. I think at some point we accepted minimalism as being modern.
this is true but it may be a coincidence. i am a western person and have only been to east asia in japan, but was blown away by how busy cities there are. nyc feels sleepy after visiting tokyo (yes i know this video is about chinese design but i feel like there are parallels and the author said so too). it's not just app design, it's everything visual design. japan has followed a very similar development trajectory to the west: if it was just about minimalism winning out evolution-style over maximalism then that would have happened there too given similar conditions. despite a lot of the comments here, i think there is a lot to the idea of people feeling re-assured by all information in one place and preferring a multitasking work approach. it is probably some cultural thing that is hard to understand for people that have not grown up with it; i personally only want to focus on one thing a at a time and consider any additional information a distraction.. but perhaps that is just a product of cultural/environmental programming.
I seriously hate the modern design, especially since they push it from phone onto laptops and desktops. And here i am with 30 inch monitor scrolling the app with huge buttons and like online per screen
@@wordswordswordsblablalaeverything in other countries is toot toot honk yell flash flash flights. As OP said, westerners also used to be like this. We got fed up.
That because 3rd party app developer doesn't bother to integrate, not an OS limitations. If you want to see seamless interapp integration. Look at suit of apps from Google and Samsung. They are also more lightweight, request appropriate permissions, can be optionally installed, provide proper support for split screen multitasking, searchable in your app drawer,...
I liked the video, but I disagree with the statement that cluttered UIs mean more info. You can have a lot of info with an uncluttered design. And I think that uncluttered UI/UXs ultimately help the users find/do what they want. You can have super-apps with clean designs, here again one doesn’t mean the other. Look at Uber, they have car riding, scooters, food delivery, car rental in a pretty clean app.
In the context of a super app, it is more information whether you like it or not. Where I live all those Uber functions are in separate unrelated apps. I've never seen a Uber super app.
You clearly didn't understand what you watched. These apps provide a ton of useful information and functionality in a single screen. You can't do that in an simple, uncluttered design because there is not enough space.
There's also the issue of an app *giving the impression* of providing more information. As a Western user of the Temu app, I find the inconsistent and vague presentation of goods (e.g. mixing metric and imperial units when giving dimensions: "3" long by 20cm wide", listing some laptop bags - on the same listing - by the diagonal screen size of the laptop they're designed to accommodate, but others by their length and width). In the case of the map that provides taxi price comparisons, far from being reassured, I'd wonder if the comparisons were actually accurate, or weighted in favour of some taxi company who had a deal with the map app company. But then, "confusopoly" is not a novel model for us in the West, either: it's long been used by e.g. mobile phone networks, who love to bundle certain contracts and features only with certain models of phone, and even have network-specific variants of phone models, all to make comparison shopping more difficult for the consumer.
@@OnigoroshiZero the functionality is there but is the information too? at a simple glance it becomes a sensory overload and people would just. go with muscle memory to their usual menus
That's what Facebook has been trying to do for ages. They tried to become Amazon, Tiktok, UA-cam all in one but ultimately failed. Only China the concept of super app works
Many of the national-wide apps in China now add "elderly mode" / "lite mode", which uses very large fonts and icons hence the content becomes super concise. The intention was making the app more accessible by those elderly who are unfamiliar with smart phones and have trouble reading small texts on the screens. Some of the apps also allow the customization for users to pick the functions that they want to be placed on the home screen of the app given the limited space. As far as I know, in addition to the elderly, a certain amount of young people (including me) are are switching to this mode as well.
I don't think most chinese ux design is cluttered on purpose, I think when you design an app with one function, and then add more features later on, it forces the app to become cluttered, as opposed to designing a multipurpose app from the beginining. Chinese consumers are very aware of good design, and chinese companies like DJI, Xiaomi, understand design. Their cars, user interfaces, home appliances all have good clean, minimilist design. Chinese brains are no different to Western brains, or any other human brain, they have just become accustomed to clutter. But good design defintely exists in China, from Architecture to enviornment design to Ui's. the real question is...how would YOU design a multipurpose app that doesn't look cluttered. It takes a lot of effort and brain power. it's much easier to just cram something on, then build from the ground up.
Realistically, multi billion corporations have enough resources to make good design - they just don't. Expansion, profit, new features > comfortable user experience.
This is a trashy post upvoted because of cultural bias. “Good” design is opinion. Culture influences people’s brains and perception so to say their brains are the same is silly. To say that certain products “understand design”, just because they conform to your standards and desires of design shows some lack of awareness of one’s own preferences.
After watching this I still don't understand how cleaner, more efficient UI would hurt those "super apps".. Having ads under every single icon in Taobao doesn't make it more useful. Blame me for oversimplifying this matter, but I think it's purely a question of competition. If the state didn't let monopolists flourish, Chinese customers would have way more choice in terms from those alternative apps, we would see a shift in bigger platform UIs. Plus, I don't see how people would prefer aggressive marketing, like constant pop-ups, click bait icons etc. over those apps which respect your time and attention span.
Exactly. By applying core design and UX principles, you can still simplify and host all these features in a single app without it being cluttered. I don’t buy the idea of busy environments meaning busy interfaces are as usable. The human mind will experience more or less cognitive load regardless and will inhibit you from completing tasks as quickly.
its quite a similar situation here in Indonesia. I notice that a lot of homegrown apps somewhat lean more into a ux philosophy similar to Chinese app design, where all apps are multi-purpose, ex. gojek, tokopedia, dana; but still implement quite a western approach with ui, something more clean and somewhat minimal. I find people here tend to have the expectation that they should be able to do a lot of things with the same app, but also want it to be a more clean user interface.
shopee and dana are sooo influenced by chinese apps. shopee looks straight up like a chinese e-commerce, down to their 7-days return policy that they’ve implemented lately. and shopee works really well here
@@bels4840 Yup, and that's one thing I dislike about Shopee's app and website design tbh. It feels unnecessarily cluttered, especially with the pop-up video when I go into the product page. Some buttons are small for no reason like the Favourite button, and at times it can be unclear which text is a button and which is only text.
Same in the Philippines. Grab is a super app in SEA. We can book a cab, order food, and pay with QR. Although we use a different mobile wallet like GCash or Maya, so it still kind of uses a Western approach in UI.
Exactly! 😂 Multipurpose function in apps that doesn't need to really confuse me. Kayak, fitur live ngapain sih bisa ada di marketplace serius sumpeh akwkwkw
Anerican apps are like a newly cleaned room, everything is neatly organized and things are placed where they belong. Chinese apps are like a messy university student dorm room, everything is a chaotic mess but you know exactly which pile of books the scissor is under
I am a UX designer from China, and a single page relies entirely on people's learning and memory of app functions. For teenagers and the elderly, the learning cost is high, especially as they will never delve into the usage that they cannot see. In order to lower the threshold for use and reduce the number of operating steps, people tend to use the menu pages that are easily accessible.
That’s true. Ian even not complaining about such amount of features but this design. Thousand colours, icons, buttons everywhere, no rules, huger mess in flow. This is main reason why those apps are usually piece of garbage.
I am a Chinese. I don't find Chinese like these kinds of design. Myself hate it because it is hard to find what you want. Actually, this bad design is not just on Chinese apps. Windows OS and its applications like Word, Excel and Linux windows etc. are all bad alike. They are not Chinese applications. I don't think the design is because of Culture. It is simply a bad habit or trends. If we want to relate it to local culture, it might be related to the habit of competing the number of functionalities. this is not just Chinese, software vendors tends to compete this way.
As a Chinese, I disagree! I think you brought up a great observation on maximalist design as an universal phenomenon, but I disagree with how that relates to local culture. Firstly I want to raise the notion that minimal design = good design is a heavily rationalist philosophy. Thus, all aesthetic criticisms of any UI must be cultural, and dismissing Chinese design as bad habits or trends is also cultural. Secondly, I think the Chinese super apps are just custom implementations of the same interfaces in Chinese society. Why does every app have a QR scanner? Why does every app have a payment system? Wouldn't it be better to turn them into one seperate app? I think these apps don't because having their own implementations (with costumised features) makes for a better user experience while in their app! I think Abode Suite and Microsoft Office are better analogies than Windows OS, and I think many people live just fine with these bundles.
I am Chinese also and I think you're missing the point. The takeaway isn't that every Chinese person loves the cluttered superapp design. It's the fact that those designs evolved in a uniquely Chinese environment. A parallel development can be seen in Japanese Websites and UI/UX. Chinese culture is one that prioritizes functionality over minimalism. I dontk know about you but I much rather have all the information easily accessible and not hidden under 5 different drawers, tabs and buttons.
@@koka1571 I am talking about the user experience. Have you ever try to baidu or chatgpt how to achieve one functionality when using wechat or microsoft word/excel? Without using a tool, you can't even know how to use a software, it is a bad UI design
@@zeccy337 It is okay to have the fucntionalities listed on the top, i am not against this. my point is it is hard to find the useful functionalities in a a menu jungle. I am talking about universal human UI demand, not Chinese or Japanese or English oriented. Bad design is bad for all the people using it.
Yes, I don't like minimalist things with overly simplified and black and white. It's just bland and soulless. I want color T-T. I am a westerner by the way.
哈啊，得不到的才是最好的，事实上这种界面用起来十分卡顿，点击一个图标后完全没有确认感，一点点延迟过后页面有可能以任何方式飞进来并出现一个大大的广告弹窗 nah, the best things in life are unattainable. In fact, this interface is very laggy to use. After clicking an icon, there is no sense of confirmation, and after a little delay, the page might fly in any way and pop up a large ad window
I think it has its pros and cons. One thing I like about a cluttered "home" interface is, the app shows you everything that is possible right out the gate. With American-style UX, you can use a program for YEARS never knowing most of its features because they are hidden away, and it's recommended to read about everything an app can do and how to find those features in the interface.
This is such an interesting topic. I’m a software engineer but I’ve always found UX design interesting. It reminds me how UI in video games made by Japanese studios also look very different from western designs.
I really enjoyed this video. Really such an eye opener for the reason as to why cluttered apps are preferred in the east. I live in Malaysia and most of our apps are very cluttered too but I never quite understood why. Thanks!
Nice video explaining how culture impacts graphic and functional software design! I'm not a graphic designer but a software dev and found the concept very cool. And I personally always loved the maximalist app/website aesthetics, like 2000s/2010s blogs. I have a feeling the "centralization" of features must also be related to survelliance, personalized ads and tracking politics.
I feel like you completely fail to talk about it from the actual development side of things. You make it sound like the people using it chose this kind of software, but I don’t think you really have a choice but to use the apps because so much of your life depends on it. So if a couple apps have a monopoly it’s way less incentive to compete in niches and really optimize a certain experience. The apps look this way because of the power structures within the company, the amount of control they give to designers, UX people etc. there’s something called Conways law that states that the structure of a product is defined by the structure of the people working on it. I think it would be way more interesting to see what development culture leads to this kind of design. Also I feel like you missed how bloated these apps truly are, they take gigabytes and gigabytes, everything tries to do everything and usually not even particularly well. There’s so much duplication of features and so many ways to get scammed or make mistakes. It’s a ridiculously unstructured ecosystem
Hi MegaMaster, thank you for your feedback. You’ve got a fair point on development. While I take a design and psychology approach to these analyses, it’ll be hard to dismiss how culture of companies themselves + business incentives may influence design. Any resources you’d recommend to start reading into this?
@@phoebeyutbt I mentioned it in my original comment, but I think one thing that definitely is very important to understand why some things are how they are is conways law. Here's a very interesting video going into what exactly it means ua-cam.com/video/5IUj1EZwpJY/v-deo.html He's trying to give as much context as possible, it's really worth the watch, even if you're not interested in software at all. especially the examples he gives about the 5 different windows UI volume controls is very interesting. Basically the end result the user sees is defined by the teams that worked on the app itself. these socalled super Apps are iiiincredibly hard to design and incredibly complex, so you need to somehow divide it into teams, and these teams need to communicate with each other. If the communication is effective you will see an end result that is effective and somewhat mirrors the way the teams are. But if you take into account how collectivistic cultures work, taking individual responsibility, the importance of workplace ettiquette, how easy it is to follow the status quo, how strongly throwing stuff away is penalised, how managers are incentivised, etc etc. then you begin to see half the picture. the other half is even worse communication between teams, if you consider that these super apps have entire companies that create mini apps inside the main app. there's virtually no communication or coordination between the main superapp teams and the mini app team, and especially no communication between different mini app teams. This is not even specific to chinese apps, but applies to any ecosystem, windows is an incredibly good example of how fragmented and convoluted these things can get. The way you can visualise this easily is "okay what if we unified the design and programming of it?" let's say WeChat spends a billion dollars on making the entire app minimalistic and reworking everything from the ground up with a really good scientifically proven, amazing UX and UI, super clean, while still having that classic Chinese flair without being too complicated for new users or elderly people. You would still regularly see very incoherent and incompatible things, just because WeChat can only update their own codebases and designs, while they have so many different delivery apps, and small micro services that are handled by completely other companies. Anyways, hope this helps.
@@phoebeyutbt If you want to know more about the rise of Chinese tech and the tech landscape in China check out AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order Hardcover by Kai-Fu Lee. Obviously the focus is on AI, but he does a good job of explaining the Chinese tech landscape and mentality compared to Silicon Valley.
This was an AMAZING analysis. I’m a graphic designer that plans to move to China for a few years in a few years, and I hate the Asian UI style. But seeing this made me understand the reasoning behind it and opened my mind for the possibility this style having its own charm. Also, I think the Metro design language, especially on Windows 8, was a perfect balance of clean Swiss design and info richness and 套餐 of Chinese UI, and I aspire to blend these two similarly in my work
I think nuance in this context means more details. I think of it like when you see product comparison charts that give you a summary then the option for more details. Here it would be that they would prefer seeing the chart with more details first.
More information means more potential cluttering. I think it’s a matter of will to clean up the clutter. I mean, you can have lots of information without cluttering it as much.
Thanks so much for summing things up in such a nice way! I am a foreigner in China for the past 8 years and people outside China have no idea how good Chinese apps are... I am tired of explaining them. Now I can just share this video with them lol
I'm from Russia (currently live in the UK), and some of the biggest apps are trying to replicate this Chinese model. e.g. VK used to be just a Russian clone of Facebook. now it's a messenger, social network, payment app.. there are games, you can even order food I think, etc. I guess this is what happens when state-owned or state-related capitalism becomes the norm in a country
My believe is that you could still cram a lot of information in a small space but with cleaner and more simple design, not all icons need to be so ornamental, or have boxes and borders around everything, when there's so much going on already, ads naturally get busy and cluttered visually to compete for attention, it's a vicious cycle.
There is another theory for “all-in-one” something. Another name for it is “vertical integration” meaning merging different business process steps together, in one company or app. As opposed to to having different (specialized) companies or apps for each step. Vertical integration usually happens when outer infrastructure works poorly and turns out that a company cannot expect that outside services will work as smoothly as its own internal processes. For example, company cannot rely on external payments to work smoothly and creates its own payment system.
As a westerner I personally don't like these types of designs. They are like visual noise that I can't wait to get away from. To me, one app or company that handles everything in such a manner is monopolistic and stifles potential competition. Additionally, whenever I see design like that my brain immediately registers it as tacky and scammy. For me, less is more.
This just sounds like a monopoly that would have been broken up in the US. As others have said, basically rebuilding an entire phones OS into a single app is no better than just having one whole OS from WeChat. Sounds like developers cutting corners with integrations to other apps by jamming them into one app, rather than some actual intentional improvement
The mobile leapfrogging not only because it's cheaper, but also for a very important reason: it's more user-friendly for most people, especially older people and those without much education. Using a computer requires at least some basic knowledge, unlike the mobile platform which is based on intuition.
❤👍👍👍👍👍🔥🙏😍👏❤️I don’t know how I end up in this program, but I have to say-I am so pleasantly surprised in the excellence of the program. All the best to you, Yu!
The UA-camr, Answer In Progress, in her video titled "why Japan's internet is weirdly designed" covers some aspects of this when she compared Japanese websites to Western ones. It's worth a look.
What I found interesting is that South Korean app design trend is more like simpler American apps, even though many popular apps, like Toss, try to integrate as many features as they can, and there’s a super app called KakaoTalk used by 99% of South Korean smartphone users. As many of you might know, South Korean society has some degree of collectivism too, as it is located in Northeast Asia. I‘m wondering if there are some other things that influence the UI/UX design trend in China, like closed business environment, opportunity to share international design trends, or just path dependence. Also, existence does not necessarily mean preference. I don’t know if the Chinese app users actually like these kind of UX, or they had no other options despite the bad experiences.
Clutter is why I would like to visit China one day. It is wildly ironic that the individualist culture creates more dull gentle universally appealing environments and the collectivist culture creates the vibrant cluttered environments that some might find overwhelming. You would think it would be the other way around. That a collectivist culture would try to take great caution to not offend or stand out too much and it would be the capitalist individualistic culture that says "screw all that, lets place a giant neon dragon across the entire face of the building".
This is so true regarding what you said about collectivism in societies. Apps in India are also designed with a similar Super App experience. A happy meal of functionalities!
Having used Google Maps vs Naver Maps (South Korea) and GaoDe Maps 高德地图 (China), I find Google Maps lacking in features. I don't mind steep learning curves for apps that are used daily. Even as a tourist spending a week or two in SK and China, I got used to their interface pretty quickly and missed them when I'm back to using Google Maps in my home country. Features like: -Traffic light turning green in XX seconds -Exact lanes to use (with road visualisation) -Metro costs and schedules -Metro quick entry and exit (Google Maps has this in some countries but they are much inferior) Thanks for creating these videos! I am really passionate in UI/UX design and your videos give good perspectives on how different countries behave.
I was searched how the traffic lights noticing feature implemented. It needs to install 5G module on the traffic lights and the navigation app can communicate with the traffic lights to get countdowns. Needs heavy investment on infrastructure. China use this not just for traffic light notice but preparing for full automatic driving.
Naver Maps really is something different. Used it while visiting SK for a week, was amazed by how seamless & convenient was the integration for the Metro.
It seems like you might not fully understand how Google Maps works. The app doesn’t lack features; rather, it’s about how well it connects with local systems. You mentioned that in China, the Naver map app shows real-time changes in traffic lights. This is possible because the app is directly integrated with the local traffic department, making it easier to implement such features. Google, on the other hand, is available in almost every country, unlike Naver, which is specifically built for SK and and some others same as china. While Google could technically implement similar features, they face challenges due to varying infrastructure levels across different countries. Google aims to provide a consistent experience globally, and some countries might lack the infrastructure needed to support these advanced features.
I lived in a cluttered place myself and the last thing I want is this cluttered design on my apps too. Super app is understandable and make sense, but being a super app doesn't mean the UI needs to be cluttered as well. The e-commerce app in my country has that cluttered design as well and I ended up not even looking at it. This is psychological because it's overwhelming the brain with too much information
I love it! It seems more cluttered and confusing because it's also written in Chinese, but I'm sure if it were in English I would indeed find it very helpful that all the info & features of an app are visible on its home screen. I think this would also be more accessible for elderly people, because I have noticed my mom and grandparents often find it hard to find features or settings on mobile apps, because they have to click on multiple things to get there.
To simplify, western apps are separated because "there's an app for that" was our introduction to apps as a mindset and monopolies are generally frowned upon and competition is seen as a positive thing. If one app does something better than another we use that instead or use both (in the cases of lyft and uber checking for which has the best priced ride). People may use websites like Kayak or something to check prices of flights across many providers, but if you buy a ticket through them and something bad happens, the customer service is a middleman instead of the main provider.
@@user-yk7mn7we2i because it is scary. What happens when the one-true-app locks your account? You''ll be locked out of everything that app does. All your eggs in THEIR basket (not your basket). And they can lock you out on a whim.
the biggest irony is that in a “free market” capitalist system like in the west, monopolies eventually dominate over everything and there won’t be many alternatives. in china there’s these multipurpose apps but also more alternatives
3:26 In India, we have similar apps (UPI apps for payments) that also offer chat features, although this functionality is not widely used and people prefer WhatsApp to chat.
I really appreciate the simplicity of the video. It would be better if there was no background music. Keep making these informative videos. Best wishes for you.
I have noticed this and often wondered this myself. Absolutely part of it is the writing system, but to doesn't completely explain it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
It's not an introvert thing lol, a lot of introverts like complexity. Also this introvert concept needs to be deleted, it groups very different people in one category
This video is amazing. Glad to see China content explained by Chinese people in English language and located in UA-cam platform. (came across to this by youtune suggestion)
This comparison is only halfway there. If you realize that the super-apps are basically a package of apps in their own ecosystems, you should be comparing their UI to a system of similar level: the OS. You wouldn't be comparing the super-app's main menu to a western app main menu; you should be comparing it to the desktop/home-screen menu of the phone. Your phone's home screen is usually filled with app icons, one for each feature you use your phone fore, just as much as the super-app is filled with icons for each feature. So you should compare the super-app main menu to your home screen, while comparing a western app main menu to a sub-menu of the super-app.
great point! Although I think apps/suites like iTunes, Adobe and Microsoft Office would be closer to Chinese super apps than OS. For iTunes, while it initially developed in the same fashion as Chinese super apps, Apple later actively divided its functionalities into seperate apps. Another example of this trend is the new Passwords app in IOS 18. For Adobe and Microsoft, their apps started as seperate softwares that were only later bundeled into their Creative Cloud and Office 365. Because super apps do exist in the West, I think comparing them to OS is not a perfect match, and there's must be a cultural mismatch in preferences between Chinese and Western consumers.
@@koka1571 I don't think the western examples you gave are on the same level as the chinese super apps. The chinese super apps allow third party developers to make their own apps within them, truly like an OS. To be equivalent, iTunes not only had to have a bunch of adjacent functionality bundled together, but also allow people to make their own mini apps to be installed and used inside iTunes. Secondly, the different functionalities of the chinese super apps are in very different areas. They have both instant messaging and money transfer (essentially banking), for example. What functionalities did iTunes have that weren't adjacent to media consumption?
I just graduated as an UX designer in Europe, and Asian design was never mentioned. i consume a lot of Asian media and I had to fight back the learnings at school because I was looking at designs that went against the things they teach us while still being successful. A big miss there.
An app being 'successful' (user adoption, user spending, user retention, etc) does not mean it therefor offers 'good' UX. Asian UX design is effective, Western UX design is efficient.
i was taught about east asian interface designs briefly, but more so in the context that you should always design for a specific type of user because their expectations and understanding can be wildly different depending on factors like culture, identity, and circumstance. unless you specifically design for east asian markets i don’t think it’s a particularly necessary wealth of knowledge you need to access. in fact i was never taught shit about right to left interfaces like those with arabic copy. but there’s no insight i could glean from that unless i was explicitly designing for middle eastern markets
I hate that every click of the website create a new window for that click, instead of loading the new link onto the same page, in another word, just refresh it !
I've been in graphic design since 2014. Early on, I made things cluttered because it looks more complicated that way. As I got better, I became extremely minimal because "less is more". I kept boxing myself to what was "right" but really it's not so black and white. I've grown to have appreciation for all these different styles, even "out dated" western websites bring me inspo today.
This is true, because customers are more willing to exchange their personal info for more convenience after they have done it once on that very app. Just look at the difference between original Facebook and the Facebook of now with Marketplace, Instagram, and all the other websites and apps that offer easy registrations with Facebook.
I don't think many people see Bruce Lee as an artist. They see him as a fighter, because that's what he did. He fought, with martial arts. He would be near the bottom of the barrel of choices for artists.
Amazing work breaking down the cultural connection to the design. I experienced a similar WeChat experience to your dad in China whilst trying to buy fruit from a streetside fruit vendor. I tried purchasing with cash and they looked at me like I was crazy.
Loved this video. Very interesting video concept, I had no idea that these super apps existed. I have to admit they do make intuitive sense. A great dive into a side of Chinese culture i never knew about. On a side note, you are adorable.
Actually, there are four significant reasons overlooked by this focus on culture - genuine underlying legal, administrative, and political causes for a lack of “super-apps” outside of China: 1. Antitrust & competition laws in developed nations prevent monopolies like WeChat from forming. 2. IP laws protect innovation by new apps from being copied by larger competitors and amalgamated into their own “super-apps” like WeChat. 3. Data protection laws protect consumers’ information from being circulated between multiple platforms within a “super-app”, and to outside third parties. 4. The lack of a truly free market in China strongly distorted historical app development, with “super-apps” more the result of specific centralized decision making, rather than the result of genuinely collective popular choices. Political will from the central government has had a stronger impact than allowed for in this video (e.g., internet blocking, no data privacy, censorship, etc.) The last of these points is clearly demonstrated by the lack of “super-apps” in every other collectivist Asian culture, from Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong to Vietnam, Japan, and Singapore (all of which use non-Chinese apps).
super interesting points! Although I'd disagree with the empirical argument at the end. Samsung, Mitsubishi are great counter-examples to similar practices in other collectivist Asian cultures. On the lack of super apps outside of China, I think suites like Adobe Cloud or Microsoft Office show that there's still some level of cultural preference for bundeled apps outside of China. Some other commentors argued that Chinese super apps should be more appropriately compared with OS systems, which makes Apple's IOS (with Apple Wallet, Pages, News, Messages, Safari etc.) also "super apps" in a 'true' free market. I think Apple's recent antitrust allegations suggests that your observations are not exclusive to China.
But Wechat as a super app is super useful, I miss it. It was super convenient. I miss how easy and convenient life in China was with these super apps, I hope such possibilities are available for other countries too, you will see the difference
I think you’re quite wrong, and I’ll address all your points individually. 1. While true in theory, the existence of American tech giants that dominate the internet disprove this in practice. Google dominates, it’s a major if not the biggest player across so many apps, browser via Chrome, video player & social media via UA-cam, internet storage via Drive, office via Google Docs/Excel/etc. Just because WeChat keeps all its services on one app while Google spreads it out across multiple apps does not mean Google is not a near-monopoly. Also see Microsoft & Meta. 2. Not when it comes to “ideas” for apps. See how Instagram stole Snapchat’s concept of Stories. Snapchat, UA-cam, Insta, and more have tried to copy TikTok’s short-form content. I would love to see a single example of a software company successfully suing a competitor for “stealing” its idea for an app. 3. In the US? Lol no. Maybe in Europe where they take data protection and privacy more seriously, but legislation on data collection in the US is virtually non-existent. 4. This is the closest you have to a valid point. China’s great firewall (GFW) shut out many dominant Western apps from the Chinese market after they refused to comply with Chinese data legislation, creating the incentive for domestic brands to fill this space. By promoting domestic growth and innovation in the software space, Chinese people rely on Chinese made apps. This is connected to your point how other collectivist cultures don’t have “super apps”. I’d say it’s far more closer to that they don’t even have many native apps in the first place. There’s no incentive to develop a native Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese/etc messaging or video apps when WhatsApp or UA-cam already dominates everything. So while you’re right that the Chinese government created the software vacuum through its GFW, Chinese people themselves chose WeChat and other super apps themselves, primarily for its convenience and efficiency. They’re tailored to a Chinese audience’s preference (esp for super apps), so Phoebe Yu’s point about culture is extremely relevant, far more relevant to any of the 4 things you mentioned.
For your last point, no super apps in other Asian countries. Because other Asian countries don't even have IT industry! Only 2 countries in this world have IT industry, which are USA and China!
The underlying reason is that the only option for alphabetic characters is vertical arrangement, and the words are of different lengths and cannot be arranged horizontally.
I don't think this explains why it "works". The /technology/ works, but as for the design, it /hurts/ the experience. Redundant buttons and clutter make the experience worse because it's hard to quickly read and navigate. The reason this tech is like this is probably - internal office politics (like, Janet is dating the boss, so we can't delete this button) and - forces of monopolies (no one's competing with us so it doesn't matter). Edit: Anyways, I'm glad you brought this to peoples' attention. I've thought about this a lot over the years...
you just think it "clutters" the experience because you're used to western design and it's a different style of interface and school of thought. A lot of text put together may be hard to read in roman alphabets, but that's not the case for mandarin where reading recognition is a lot faster.
@@shinluis I've used both interfaces a fair amount over the years. I don't think reading recognition is in general faster for Mandarin - do you have reasons to believe this? Edit: just to be clear, I think the video is really cool, and I hope she makes more! Very interesting stuff! Hope I’m not coming off as a totally terrible person, hahah…
me on the other hand hates this "minimalism" design where I need to navigate 5-6 sub menus with properties under 'buttons' that doesn't make sense to be there. Lost are the days where I could change my password under some Settings menu or under my Profile menu.
@@jmarcos06 Good point. Apple hides things in random menus to give the illusion of simplicity, That can hurt the experience for users who want to do use advanced functions IMO. Chinese apps/web seem to have button redundancies growing out their ears, though... Which I think probably hurts the experience, especially for grannies and kiddos or anyone who just wants to get things done and move on with their lives. I'm probably an advanced user, but I think it probably makes sense to prioritize grannies and kiddos.
Thanks for an interesting video. Never thought of the Chinese app designs in that perspective. I agree to your conclusion that when youre creating something, create with culture in mind. I work in Korea as a software engineer and do care a lot about user experiences of the products I contribute to.
You cannot really multitask with a superapp. Let’s say at one moment you’re doing online shopping but then need to order something for lunch. With singular superapp, you have to leave/close the online shop, go to the main page of the super app, and then go to online food order feature. When apps are separate, I can just leave the online shop in the background, open online food order app, then go back to the online shop app in exact the same state as I left it. Super app can actually have multiple window and maintain proper multitasking. However they’re usually aren’t as good or as polished to leaving the real phone OS handling the multitask. Also superapp doesn’t really allow you to finely control what permission each app got.
You cannot really multitask with a superapp. Let’s say at one moment you’re doing online shopping but then need to order something for lunch. With singular superapp, you have to leave/close the online shop, go to the main page of the super app, and then go to online food order feature. When apps are separate, I can just leave the online shop in the background, open online food order app, then go back to the online shop app in exact the same state as I left it. Super app can actually have multiple window and maintain proper multitasking. However they’re usually aren’t as good or as polished to leaving the real phone OS handling the multitask. Also superapp doesn’t really allow you to finely control what permission each app got.
Lived in China for 7years and still use Chinese apps daily. Actually I like the way Chinese apps are designed. I like the all in one concept, and that's why I took advantage of Wechat and scaled a big business on it. Different design patterns should exist and that's okay.
But some of WeChat's rules are really difficult to use, and they consume a lot of memory and hard disk space on Android, forcing Chinese mobile phones to use 12GB or even 16GB of RAM
I do like the idea of the apps working in tandem with one another and the visual style is reminiscent of the old web. The combo meal analogy is also very good. If implemented with productivity in mind, the 'clutter' can become 'information dense'.
10:20 Hate it so much because I'm a person who don't use many digital service on daily, so every time I open the app for doing something simple like ordering a drink, I get confused with all the ads and micro content. However one day If I live in a bigger city and need to install an app for every coffee shop, movie theater, restaurant v..v for coupon collecting or membership, I will prefer this kind of cluster f* app.
I'm a UX from Brazil, south America, and this approach to facilitate and have the "happy meal" on a supper app it would make a lot of sense, for elders or accessibility here. We consume a lot of Western design, which is very exclusive and we have many problems such as illiteracy, digital or otherwise. Thank you for the content 😸
Great insight. As a new product manager designing international platform app serving Chinese and the western world, i now noticed that I am pushing minimalism in my design too hard since I am familiar with Apple-ish design. I need to rethink culture and possibility of having 2 version of the same app.
if i want eat - i go in eating app, if i want play, i go into app store. U dont eat in clothes shop or sleep in metro. Same thing here - 1 app - 1 purpose. simple as fck
This is like coming back to old yahoo search engine interface. In early 2000, search engines are all these cluttered designs. When google came to scene, they were the ones who popularized clean, minimalistic interfaces.
(western) ux designer here! one of the primary goals when observing users is to figure out what their mental mappings are, and what they intuitively want to accomplish. because if you can reduce cognitive load you improve a user’s experience. i can’t say for certain that ux designers in china/japan also try to reduce cognitive load, but it would certainly raise my eyebrows if they didn’t. that’s the whole idea behind the “less is more” saying, less features means less scanning and thinking about a task you want to accomplish. so from that end i’d be super curious to know what the methodology ux designers in china/japan utilize to reduce cognitive load without reducing features!
It is the opposite. There are existing monopolies in each sector and they don't let the new tech startups penetrate. So there wouldn't be a one-super app.
I also don't see what's the problem with using different apps. Okay, you need to switch between the apps. What's the problem though? Is it somehow different from switching between functionalities within a superapp? Convenience doesn't seem to be the case here, as integrations between the apps can provide just the same. Taking the example from the video, the only issue I see with ordering a coffee is that mobile wallet required update. However, it's a problem with the wallet app that doesn't let you to use it without immediate update. I often see apps handle it well lately.
I spent a couple of months in China and honestly, I don't think it is too hard to get used to. While it did irritate me at first, after using those few apps (Alipay, Wechat, Taobao, Meituan) for like 3 days, it wasn't even a hassle anymore, because it is just so convenient even if it is somewhat of a clutter or reminiscent of the early Internet lol With those 4 apps, you can almost assimilate seamlessly into their livelihood - well, digitally, at least. As for the pop-ups in the APPs, they are alright, especially when you compare them to those pop-ups on computer sites that asks you for your permissions and cookies, or wikipedia asking for donations. Another thing that might destroy your eyes at first, but you grow accustom to quickly is: when you watch Chinese streams, there is an option to enable on-screen comments where you will see chat comments fly by across the screen in front of the stream. It used to bother me, but eventually, you just kinda automatically grow used to it. I remember coming back to the US and not being used to having to move my eyes to the right to read a Twitch chatbox lol
I think another important point - I believe some research paper also talks about it - is that Chinese language itself is very dense. Each character can represent a lot of information. So Chinese are very used to dense information environment, which kinda preps them for apps with dense information. This applies to Japanese as well.
It's an interesting take, but I feel this analysis is missing a few key points: * Super Apps exist in China in the void created by the ban of the Google App Play Store. These apps are kind of creating their own "Android on top of Android". * Are alternatives to super apps really available in China? If "dense & feature rich & mono-app" has no competition vs the western "minimalist & simple & multi-app", it's hard to tell if users actually prefer this option. They might be using it simply because it beats what came before (ex: cash, wire transfers, Debit Cards or simply nothing).
Here's a thought I had regarding the leapfrogging: here in the West, people were quite used to modular systems due to their experience with computers. This is true on at least the level of "mouse/keyboard/screen/computer", but can be extended to the PC itself by choosing parts like graphics cards, CPUs, etc. The software side of things is then essentially a reflection of that: you have your home screen and you can select all the apps that you feel are necessary for you and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense to you. If you skipped straight to the phone which is basically a complete box, perhaps you'd also expect all of its functionality to be laid out for you. Because to be quite honest: the way that all these little icons are laid out in these super apps are very reminiscent of a basic home screen to me. This leads me to another thought: if you have a complete box, you have less (or perhaps no) options of changing parts of it. In a modular system, if you think that app XYZ isn't that good and there's a better alternative, switching is rather easy.
As someone who lives between China and Europe, I need to say that even though this kind of super-apps may be a very comprehensive concept, I prefer paying in cash and not needing to scan stuff and receive sms, and scan my documents to validate a mini-app extension, to "book" a ticket for a monument, all this when I am at the very entrance of that monument and there's no cue. China became a more excluding society because of the obligation of using those private means to access public services, and enormously excluding for tourists, if they even matter. There's an abuse on getting individuals info from a lot of webs before they even let you check if they are what you need, or if what they are supposed to offer was just true, and that makes the experience soo slow and annoying. Even though it may work in other aspects. Thanks for the video! :)
We have to remember that East Asian pictorial language allows for “cluttered” UI because you can use less characters to express more meaning. The same cannot be done with latin based languages. Chinese, for example, can use four characters to express the same meaning as a full 10 or even 15 English word sentence. You can extrapolate how much more information can be shown on screen using Chinese characters than English words. Eastern Asian app design takes full advantage of this. Edit: We also have to consider that information processing speed is in high demand for countries with high pop density. There is no time to switch between apps when you’re trying to buy something because there is over 20 people behind you in line on a daily basis. So there is a demand to process payment as quickly as possible so the line doesn’t clog up because one person has to constantly switch apps. Thus, all of the functions get centralized into one super-app, allowing information processing speed to dramatically increase.
There’s nothing collectivist about cross-industry monopolies (edit to clarify: they add value to neither the community nor the individual). Western countries have distributed economies and antitrust laws to prevent these apps forming. I don’t think it would fly here to allow one company to have dominating control over every aspect of constituents’ lives. It’s already problematic when your Uber account is deactivated. These apps thrive in authoritarian or planned economies. It’s true that it’s more effort for the consumer to have multiple apps, but it is something that Phone OEMs can design around and the home screen exists for a reason and it already looks like these apps for a reason. Standards exist for the interchange of data between these apps and the services that use them will eventually win. It’s true that phone OEMs have too much control over users but that’s why there is so much legal action between governments, OEMs and social networks. I also hate the UX of QR-codes-to-pay. I can see the appeal if you don’t want to participate in international banking standards, but at least use NFC or something secure and more reliable.
Eh, I have lived in the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, South Korea and China. I quite like the all in one ( wechat in China, Kakao in South Korea), it just works super well with the way my brain works. I like how well things are integrated. In the Netherlands everything has an app...but things are so disjointed and messy compared to the asian all in one that I just do not bother. I hate it whenever I am forced to use the app version of some Dutch company. Their UX design suuuucks. And they get away with it because these damn companies feel barely any pressure to improve because they are oligarchs who do not compete with each other in practice only on paper, their only goal is to lock you into their crappy ecossytem, so they all suck. Meanwhile in Asia, integration has to be good with the super app because otherwise people just switch to the more convenient option in the same app. these super apps they are basically like a mini OS whereby other companies offer services within the app. But the mindset is also different here in asia: convenience& integration rather than capture & lock in.
If every app has everything in a super app, then nobody has an actual monopoly of it. The irony of your comment is that the western set up is actually the one encouraging more monopoly. Using your example with Uber. You can only request an Uber via Uber app while in my experience in China, you can request a ride service in several apps, you can even request official taxi services in many apps and even in the official ride sharing app you can choose between an official taxi or a regular driver. I have experienced more challenges in "choosing" in the western market than in the asian market. I was banned from Paypal long ago without any clear reason and tried to contact them and they just kept repeating a letter like a robot. At that time, there were not many paying options from my country, so I ended giving up on my purchase. So I don't buy that bs argument that western environment is less monopolistic. I lived in China for 2 years and the actual challenge was being overwhelmed with options when doing online shopping, i.e. While here, most of the market is heavily influenced by Amazon, which ironically failed in China, since couls not keep with so many competition and low prices, while here they can charge higher delivery prices.
Nice video thanks! Your audio has a lot of echo, and there's quite a lot of noise on the mic. It's subtle, but it makes the difference between videos that feel amateur and those that feel professional. Hope to see more content in future! 🙏
I really like the Chinese map application where you can discuss the traffic jam with other people who are also in the same traffic jam😂
That's literally waze.. a Google owned application.
@@phunweng962why don’t they integrate with Google maps just curious😂
@@phunweng962 But it shows the timer for the traffic light, that's the best part.
@@ssdass4303waze shows…. TIMER on red lights??
@@phunweng962 is waze owned by google? i woul've never thought
it is Chinese character system that make this design even possible，let alone good or bad. imaging that page in english, total disaster.
this !!!!
Not really, if you go to grab in south east asia, it's also cluttered af.
Actually if the language was switched in English, the page would become more simply and succinct.
@@Hanzhi-ng5zj Only at the expense of discarding some info.
@@Coz131SEA is pretty much a China-lite in term of tech and industry
As a Chinese, I deeply hate this over-designed UI/UX trend in China. Many of those fancy colorful widgets and buttons are actually slowing down my poor phone (not to mention the disgusting shakey ADs). More importantly, most of those functions are not part of the core app! Imagine you can complete lending services in almost any application, even in Chinese Uber! These buttons are actually like many micro clickbaits hoping to attract your precious attention. SIn this case, every app in my phone take up more than 3-4 Gb of storage even if I barely use them, and WeChat app is actually can be over 50-100 Gb in someone's phone! So I changed my phone language in to English for a purer experience and less-noisy UI.
Yea this is also one disadvantage of a monopolized app market structure, where the market leader is trying to pull everyone , but in some sense creates trash for another individual. This can create a notion where more is less 🤷♂😁
And what happens when you run out of battery or you lose your phone? You literally cannot find your way home.
Yeah, I’ve tried some apps that try the combo experience, like Outlook Mail+Calendar, Snapchat Messaging+Tiktok Clone, YT Shorts+Long form+music player, etc, and they all do one thing well at most. I like having a single inbox for email, but my university email (outlook exchange) has next to zero compatibility and blocks every client. Outlook Mail lacks a proper refresh button, most TikTok clones dilute and clutter the experience of an app while adding very very little value (I’ve never seen a Snapchat story highlight promoted that isn’t spam or awful, although the Snap Map is nice). Facebook is terrible for trying to see actual content (no moderation and lots of AI), but it has a nice system for buy sell groups.
Like, maybe Chinese companies just QA test their apps a lot more than western companies, but whenever I see an app that does more than one thing, it usually still only does one thing well. If anything, the lack of tactility is more of an annoyance to me than having to switch apps (especially since iOS rarely allows multi instancing apps, a super app would probably be hard to multitask with) (although I acknowledge that it could be different for a online culture more used to smartphones over PCs). I think if I wanted a super app like combo experience, I’d rather just be able to install mods or plugins to add those features.
Edit: I hate overly minimalist designs too ofc, since they require a lot more to navigate. My ideal is probably just being able to hide superfluous icons, but also having everything laid out accessibly
Indeed. Especially when phone prices rack up when you get one with larger storage size, this would be quite unideal. Any ideas for how to workaround this?
@@phoebeyutbti’ve been thinking about this, but besides designing English-like UI, or cloud services, i’m out of solutions.
as a Chinese, I really want to fix their UI because I get dizzzyyy, I like simplicity desings
I agree with u
As a westerner I prefer Chinese app design. The apps we've got here are not necessarily simpler, if anything, precisely because everything is NOT on the same page, it's usually hard to find and navigate. I like when I open Chinese app or website and I have everything on the main page and don't need to swipe or look for it in weird places.
你自己用用几个国外的app你就明白了，好多app的使用逻辑简直是愚蠢
@@easyeasy5961 总比浏览器强，动画缺失设计不统一这些先不说了，严重消耗资源更是灾难，这些才是客观的问题，你说的使用逻辑就好像windows用户永不来macos一样是习惯问题
@@samuelboczek1834 you joking right. There is a reason why folders are made. It's to separate things which makes it easier for us to find them later. If everything is at 1 place then everything is hard to find
All in one app? Sounds like an operating system.
Emacs mentioned????
nah, can't be, an app acts like an os and is mistaken to be an app?! /s
Interesting.. Plz elaborate!
'Cos it is a de facto OS. All the various functionalities (save chat, payment and insta-like videos and posts) come from installing the so-called mini-apps, which instead of being installed on Android from the Play store or the Baidu store, they are installed from the Wechat store that sits within the Wechat app. It's like the Java Runtime Environment, but on steroids.
@@phoebeyutbt Operating systems are essentially the original "super apps." They allow integration of various features and applications (payments, messaging, and shopping). When someone claims that an all-in-one app is a novel concept, we long had this functionality in the form of OS.
Funny thing is that many western apps in the late 90s and early 2000s also had cluttered designs. I think at some point we accepted minimalism as being modern.
this is true but it may be a coincidence. i am a western person and have only been to east asia in japan, but was blown away by how busy cities there are. nyc feels sleepy after visiting tokyo (yes i know this video is about chinese design but i feel like there are parallels and the author said so too). it's not just app design, it's everything visual design. japan has followed a very similar development trajectory to the west: if it was just about minimalism winning out evolution-style over maximalism then that would have happened there too given similar conditions. despite a lot of the comments here, i think there is a lot to the idea of people feeling re-assured by all information in one place and preferring a multitasking work approach. it is probably some cultural thing that is hard to understand for people that have not grown up with it; i personally only want to focus on one thing a at a time and consider any additional information a distraction.. but perhaps that is just a product of cultural/environmental programming.
I seriously hate the modern design, especially since they push it from phone onto laptops and desktops. And here i am with 30 inch monitor scrolling the app with huge buttons and like online per screen
@@wordswordswordsblablalaeverything in other countries is toot toot honk yell flash flash flights. As OP said, westerners also used to be like this. We got fed up.
when apps become the OS. instead of opening 2 apps they just open 3 screens in one app
I like this.
Except the integration between these pages is seamless
That because 3rd party app developer doesn't bother to integrate, not an OS limitations. If you want to see seamless interapp integration. Look at suit of apps from Google and Samsung. They are also more lightweight, request appropriate permissions, can be optionally installed, provide proper support for split screen multitasking, searchable in your app drawer,...
@@yuitachibana8829 that's not true
@yuitachibana8829 I would love to have seamless Integration on Android, but this is not the case
I liked the video, but I disagree with the statement that cluttered UIs mean more info. You can have a lot of info with an uncluttered design. And I think that uncluttered UI/UXs ultimately help the users find/do what they want. You can have super-apps with clean designs, here again one doesn’t mean the other. Look at Uber, they have car riding, scooters, food delivery, car rental in a pretty clean app.
In the context of a super app, it is more information whether you like it or not.
Where I live all those Uber functions are in separate unrelated apps.
I've never seen a Uber super app.
more "info" yes. But how much of it is signal?
You clearly didn't understand what you watched.
These apps provide a ton of useful information and functionality in a single screen. You can't do that in an simple, uncluttered design because there is not enough space.
There's also the issue of an app *giving the impression* of providing more information. As a Western user of the Temu app, I find the inconsistent and vague presentation of goods (e.g. mixing metric and imperial units when giving dimensions: "3" long by 20cm wide", listing some laptop bags - on the same listing - by the diagonal screen size of the laptop they're designed to accommodate, but others by their length and width). In the case of the map that provides taxi price comparisons, far from being reassured, I'd wonder if the comparisons were actually accurate, or weighted in favour of some taxi company who had a deal with the map app company.
But then, "confusopoly" is not a novel model for us in the West, either: it's long been used by e.g. mobile phone networks, who love to bundle certain contracts and features only with certain models of phone, and even have network-specific variants of phone models, all to make comparison shopping more difficult for the consumer.
@@OnigoroshiZero the functionality is there but is the information too? at a simple glance it becomes a sensory overload and people would just. go with muscle memory to their usual menus
Sounds like all of those super apps try to become a monopoly with its ecosystem
That's how it generally is everywhere.
No, they became a monopoly first and started to deprioritize user experience.
That's what Facebook has been trying to do for ages. They tried to become Amazon, Tiktok, UA-cam all in one but ultimately failed. Only China the concept of super app works
Also great for the govt, as they just need to siphon data from one provider, thus allowing even more efficient surveillance!
But solve the problem of android, its hard to communicate between apps for security reasons, if everything is in the same app is slightly more secure
Many of the national-wide apps in China now add "elderly mode" / "lite mode", which uses very large fonts and icons hence the content becomes super concise. The intention was making the app more accessible by those elderly who are unfamiliar with smart phones and have trouble reading small texts on the screens. Some of the apps also allow the customization for users to pick the functions that they want to be placed on the home screen of the app given the limited space. As far as I know, in addition to the elderly, a certain amount of young people (including me) are are switching to this mode as well.
I don't think most chinese ux design is cluttered on purpose, I think when you design an app with one function, and then add more features later on, it forces the app to become cluttered, as opposed to designing a multipurpose app from the beginining. Chinese consumers are very aware of good design, and chinese companies like DJI, Xiaomi, understand design. Their cars, user interfaces, home appliances all have good clean, minimilist design. Chinese brains are no different to Western brains, or any other human brain, they have just become accustomed to clutter. But good design defintely exists in China, from Architecture to enviornment design to Ui's. the real question is...how would YOU design a multipurpose app that doesn't look cluttered. It takes a lot of effort and brain power. it's much easier to just cram something on, then build from the ground up.
Realistically, multi billion corporations have enough resources to make good design - they just don't. Expansion, profit, new features > comfortable user experience.
Well, here comes the AI
I couldn’t agree more. This video’s explanation is unsatisfying
And any such design will need to be adaptive to a constant 4-week update cycle without falling back into a cluttered mess.
This is a trashy post upvoted because of cultural bias.
“Good” design is opinion.
Culture influences people’s brains and perception so to say their brains are the same is silly.
To say that certain products “understand design”, just because they conform to your standards and desires of design shows some lack of awareness of one’s own preferences.
After watching this I still don't understand how cleaner, more efficient UI would hurt those "super apps"..
Having ads under every single icon in Taobao doesn't make it more useful.
Blame me for oversimplifying this matter, but I think it's purely a question of competition. If the state didn't let monopolists flourish, Chinese customers would have way more choice in terms from those alternative apps, we would see a shift in bigger platform UIs.
Plus, I don't see how people would prefer aggressive marketing, like constant pop-ups, click bait icons etc. over those apps which respect your time and attention span.
Indeed. The video does not explain this aspect.
It's not mutually exclusive. Super app clean UI.
Agree
Exactly. By applying core design and UX principles, you can still simplify and host all these features in a single app without it being cluttered. I don’t buy the idea of busy environments meaning busy interfaces are as usable. The human mind will experience more or less cognitive load regardless and will inhibit you from completing tasks as quickly.
What this video does is justify the bad app/website design through a cultural lens. The apps and websites are still horrible design in themselves.
its quite a similar situation here in Indonesia. I notice that a lot of homegrown apps somewhat lean more into a ux philosophy similar to Chinese app design, where all apps are multi-purpose, ex. gojek, tokopedia, dana; but still implement quite a western approach with ui, something more clean and somewhat minimal. I find people here tend to have the expectation that they should be able to do a lot of things with the same app, but also want it to be a more clean user interface.
Interesting! Seems like there are lots of similarities between East and Southeast Asian countries. Thanks for sharing.
shopee and dana are sooo influenced by chinese apps. shopee looks straight up like a chinese e-commerce, down to their 7-days return policy that they’ve implemented lately. and shopee works really well here
@@bels4840 Yup, and that's one thing I dislike about Shopee's app and website design tbh. It feels unnecessarily cluttered, especially with the pop-up video when I go into the product page. Some buttons are small for no reason like the Favourite button, and at times it can be unclear which text is a button and which is only text.
Same in the Philippines. Grab is a super app in SEA. We can book a cab, order food, and pay with QR. Although we use a different mobile wallet like GCash or Maya, so it still kind of uses a Western approach in UI.
Exactly! 😂 Multipurpose function in apps that doesn't need to really confuse me. Kayak, fitur live ngapain sih bisa ada di marketplace serius sumpeh akwkwkw
Anerican apps are like a newly cleaned room, everything is neatly organized and things are placed where they belong. Chinese apps are like a messy university student dorm room, everything is a chaotic mess but you know exactly which pile of books the scissor is under
hhhhhh~Ture!
>everything is neatly organized and things are placed where they belong
not true tho
I am a UX designer from China, and a single page relies entirely on people's learning and memory of app functions. For teenagers and the elderly, the learning cost is high, especially as they will never delve into the usage that they cannot see. In order to lower the threshold for use and reduce the number of operating steps, people tend to use the menu pages that are easily accessible.
Absolutely correct
That’s true. Ian even not complaining about such amount of features but this design. Thousand colours, icons, buttons everywhere, no rules, huger mess in flow. This is main reason why those apps are usually piece of garbage.
yo I loved that you picked your sources as videos and clipped them, is like having a personalized playlist of the things I like ready to watch
I am a Chinese. I don't find Chinese like these kinds of design. Myself hate it because it is hard to find what you want. Actually, this bad design is not just on Chinese apps. Windows OS and its applications like Word, Excel and Linux windows etc. are all bad alike. They are not Chinese applications. I don't think the design is because of Culture. It is simply a bad habit or trends. If we want to relate it to local culture, it might be related to the habit of competing the number of functionalities. this is not just Chinese, software vendors tends to compete this way.
As a Chinese, I disagree! I think you brought up a great observation on maximalist design as an universal phenomenon, but I disagree with how that relates to local culture.
Firstly I want to raise the notion that minimal design = good design is a heavily rationalist philosophy. Thus, all aesthetic criticisms of any UI must be cultural, and dismissing Chinese design as bad habits or trends is also cultural.
Secondly, I think the Chinese super apps are just custom implementations of the same interfaces in Chinese society. Why does every app have a QR scanner? Why does every app have a payment system? Wouldn't it be better to turn them into one seperate app? I think these apps don't because having their own implementations (with costumised features) makes for a better user experience while in their app!
I think Abode Suite and Microsoft Office are better analogies than Windows OS, and I think many people live just fine with these bundles.
I am Chinese also and I think you're missing the point. The takeaway isn't that every Chinese person loves the cluttered superapp design. It's the fact that those designs evolved in a uniquely Chinese environment. A parallel development can be seen in Japanese Websites and UI/UX. Chinese culture is one that prioritizes functionality over minimalism. I dontk know about you but I much rather have all the information easily accessible and not hidden under 5 different drawers, tabs and buttons.
@@koka1571 I am talking about the user experience. Have you ever try to baidu or chatgpt how to achieve one functionality when using wechat or microsoft word/excel? Without using a tool, you can't even know how to use a software, it is a bad UI design
@@zeccy337 It is okay to have the fucntionalities listed on the top, i am not against this. my point is it is hard to find the useful functionalities in a a menu jungle. I am talking about universal human UI demand, not Chinese or Japanese or English oriented. Bad design is bad for all the people using it.
I kind of love this extremely dense, icon-filled UI. It's stylish to me
Yes, I don't like minimalist things with overly simplified and black and white. It's just bland and soulless. I want color T-T. I am a westerner by the way.
哈啊，得不到的才是最好的，事实上这种界面用起来十分卡顿，点击一个图标后完全没有确认感，一点点延迟过后页面有可能以任何方式飞进来并出现一个大大的广告弹窗
nah, the best things in life are unattainable. In fact, this interface is very laggy to use. After clicking an icon, there is no sense of confirmation, and after a little delay, the page might fly in any way and pop up a large ad window
it's very nostalgic for me even though i've never grown up in the era of tech. very y2k adjacent
I think it has its pros and cons. One thing I like about a cluttered "home" interface is, the app shows you everything that is possible right out the gate. With American-style UX, you can use a program for YEARS never knowing most of its features because they are hidden away, and it's recommended to read about everything an app can do and how to find those features in the interface.
How many people know that you can press the space bar to temporarily speed up UA-cam?
This is such an interesting topic. I’m a software engineer but I’ve always found UX design interesting. It reminds me how UI in video games made by Japanese studios also look very different from western designs.
I think japan case is much different....
But I like the paper the video based on. Thxs for sharing...
And thxs for making a video 😊❤
I really enjoyed this video. Really such an eye opener for the reason as to why cluttered apps are preferred in the east. I live in Malaysia and most of our apps are very cluttered too but I never quite understood why. Thanks!
I love this. I'm a developer who is studying ux design and I never thought to design and build with culture in mind. Excellent video.
Thank you Bria!!
chinese app more like isolate jail.
they have everything in it. you don't need going outside.
what you see is manipulate by CCP algorithm.
Nice video explaining how culture impacts graphic and functional software design! I'm not a graphic designer but a software dev and found the concept very cool. And I personally always loved the maximalist app/website aesthetics, like 2000s/2010s blogs. I have a feeling the "centralization" of features must also be related to survelliance, personalized ads and tracking politics.
I feel like you completely fail to talk about it from the actual development side of things. You make it sound like the people using it chose this kind of software, but I don’t think you really have a choice but to use the apps because so much of your life depends on it. So if a couple apps have a monopoly it’s way less incentive to compete in niches and really optimize a certain experience. The apps look this way because of the power structures within the company, the amount of control they give to designers, UX people etc. there’s something called Conways law that states that the structure of a product is defined by the structure of the people working on it. I think it would be way more interesting to see what development culture leads to this kind of design. Also I feel like you missed how bloated these apps truly are, they take gigabytes and gigabytes, everything tries to do everything and usually not even particularly well. There’s so much duplication of features and so many ways to get scammed or make mistakes. It’s a ridiculously unstructured ecosystem
Hi MegaMaster, thank you for your feedback. You’ve got a fair point on development. While I take a design and psychology approach to these analyses, it’ll be hard to dismiss how culture of companies themselves + business incentives may influence design. Any resources you’d recommend to start reading into this?
@@phoebeyutbt I mentioned it in my original comment, but I think one thing that definitely is very important to understand why some things are how they are is conways law. Here's a very interesting video going into what exactly it means ua-cam.com/video/5IUj1EZwpJY/v-deo.html He's trying to give as much context as possible, it's really worth the watch, even if you're not interested in software at all. especially the examples he gives about the 5 different windows UI volume controls is very interesting. Basically the end result the user sees is defined by the teams that worked on the app itself. these socalled super Apps are iiiincredibly hard to design and incredibly complex, so you need to somehow divide it into teams, and these teams need to communicate with each other. If the communication is effective you will see an end result that is effective and somewhat mirrors the way the teams are. But if you take into account how collectivistic cultures work, taking individual responsibility, the importance of workplace ettiquette, how easy it is to follow the status quo, how strongly throwing stuff away is penalised, how managers are incentivised, etc etc. then you begin to see half the picture. the other half is even worse communication between teams, if you consider that these super apps have entire companies that create mini apps inside the main app. there's virtually no communication or coordination between the main superapp teams and the mini app team, and especially no communication between different mini app teams. This is not even specific to chinese apps, but applies to any ecosystem, windows is an incredibly good example of how fragmented and convoluted these things can get. The way you can visualise this easily is "okay what if we unified the design and programming of it?" let's say WeChat spends a billion dollars on making the entire app minimalistic and reworking everything from the ground up with a really good scientifically proven, amazing UX and UI, super clean, while still having that classic Chinese flair without being too complicated for new users or elderly people. You would still regularly see very incoherent and incompatible things, just because WeChat can only update their own codebases and designs, while they have so many different delivery apps, and small micro services that are handled by completely other companies. Anyways, hope this helps.
@@megamaster7667 very good comment, i liked that video as well
@@phoebeyutbt Very smart tai chi, turning criticism into a learning opportunity, you are one smart girl.
@@phoebeyutbt If you want to know more about the rise of Chinese tech and the tech landscape in China check out AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order Hardcover by Kai-Fu Lee. Obviously the focus is on AI, but he does a good job of explaining the Chinese tech landscape and mentality compared to Silicon Valley.
I really like the solid research and experience behind it into this. Good job!
I sense a connection between Chinese characters and cluttered UI/Street ads. Both carry lots of information in a tight space.
This was an AMAZING analysis. I’m a graphic designer that plans to move to China for a few years in a few years, and I hate the Asian UI style. But seeing this made me understand the reasoning behind it and opened my mind for the possibility this style having its own charm. Also, I think the Metro design language, especially on Windows 8, was a perfect balance of clean Swiss design and info richness and 套餐 of Chinese UI, and I aspire to blend these two similarly in my work
High context cultures prioritise nuanced communication so a cluttered design makes sense? I don’t understand how the two factors relate to each other.
I think nuance in this context means more details. I think of it like when you see product comparison charts that give you a summary then the option for more details. Here it would be that they would prefer seeing the chart with more details first.
More information means more potential cluttering. I think it’s a matter of will to clean up the clutter. I mean, you can have lots of information without cluttering it as much.
Thanks so much for summing things up in such a nice way! I am a foreigner in China for the past 8 years and people outside China have no idea how good Chinese apps are... I am tired of explaining them. Now I can just share this video with them lol
I'm from Russia (currently live in the UK), and some of the biggest apps are trying to replicate this Chinese model. e.g. VK used to be just a Russian clone of Facebook. now it's a messenger, social network, payment app.. there are games, you can even order food I think, etc. I guess this is what happens when state-owned or state-related capitalism becomes the norm in a country
My believe is that you could still cram a lot of information in a small space but with cleaner and more simple design, not all icons need to be so ornamental, or have boxes and borders around everything, when there's so much going on already, ads naturally get busy and cluttered visually to compete for attention, it's a vicious cycle.
There is another theory for “all-in-one” something. Another name for it is “vertical integration” meaning merging different business process steps together, in one company or app. As opposed to to having different (specialized) companies or apps for each step. Vertical integration usually happens when outer infrastructure works poorly and turns out that a company cannot expect that outside services will work as smoothly as its own internal processes. For example, company cannot rely on external payments to work smoothly and creates its own payment system.
Excellent video. I could use your videos for my startup research
As a westerner I personally don't like these types of designs. They are like visual noise that I can't wait to get away from. To me, one app or company that handles everything in such a manner is monopolistic and stifles potential competition. Additionally, whenever I see design like that my brain immediately registers it as tacky and scammy. For me, less is more.
It us because you as westerner can’t handle complex concepts on one
@@Rusu421 Bold of you to assume something about someone you've never met.
Cope ccp ahaha bot @@Rusu421
I like it personally, only if the icons were flat and slightly bigger.
@@InfiniteScrollMachine you are random account in the Net. Nice to meet you.
This just sounds like a monopoly that would have been broken up in the US. As others have said, basically rebuilding an entire phones OS into a single app is no better than just having one whole OS from WeChat. Sounds like developers cutting corners with integrations to other apps by jamming them into one app, rather than some actual intentional improvement
As a Chinese, I hate this kind of "Chinese" UI design
Chinese apps are very messy and overwhelming.
I could listen to you talk for hours. Such a soothing voice and a very interesting topic. Thank you for all this insight
The mobile leapfrogging not only because it's cheaper, but also for a very important reason: it's more user-friendly for most people, especially older people and those without much education. Using a computer requires at least some basic knowledge, unlike the mobile platform which is based on intuition.
❤👍👍👍👍👍🔥🙏😍👏❤️I don’t know how I end up in this program, but I have to say-I am so pleasantly surprised in the excellence of the program. All the best to you, Yu!
The UA-camr, Answer In Progress, in her video titled "why Japan's internet is weirdly designed" covers some aspects of this when she compared Japanese websites to Western ones. It's worth a look.
What I found interesting is that South Korean app design trend is more like simpler American apps, even though many popular apps, like Toss, try to integrate as many features as they can, and there’s a super app called KakaoTalk used by 99% of South Korean smartphone users. As many of you might know, South Korean society has some degree of collectivism too, as it is located in Northeast Asia. I‘m wondering if there are some other things that influence the UI/UX design trend in China, like closed business environment, opportunity to share international design trends, or just path dependence. Also, existence does not necessarily mean preference. I don’t know if the Chinese app users actually like these kind of UX, or they had no other options despite the bad experiences.
Clutter is why I would like to visit China one day. It is wildly ironic that the individualist culture creates more dull gentle universally appealing environments and the collectivist culture creates the vibrant cluttered environments that some might find overwhelming. You would think it would be the other way around. That a collectivist culture would try to take great caution to not offend or stand out too much and it would be the capitalist individualistic culture that says "screw all that, lets place a giant neon dragon across the entire face of the building".
This is so true regarding what you said about collectivism in societies. Apps in India are also designed with a similar Super App experience. A happy meal of functionalities!
Having used Google Maps vs Naver Maps (South Korea) and GaoDe Maps 高德地图 (China), I find Google Maps lacking in features. I don't mind steep learning curves for apps that are used daily. Even as a tourist spending a week or two in SK and China, I got used to their interface pretty quickly and missed them when I'm back to using Google Maps in my home country.
Features like:
-Traffic light turning green in XX seconds
-Exact lanes to use (with road visualisation)
-Metro costs and schedules
-Metro quick entry and exit (Google Maps has this in some countries but they are much inferior)
Thanks for creating these videos! I am really passionate in UI/UX design and your videos give good perspectives on how different countries behave.
I was searched how the traffic lights noticing feature implemented. It needs to install 5G module on the traffic lights and the navigation app can communicate with the traffic lights to get countdowns. Needs heavy investment on infrastructure. China use this not just for traffic light notice but preparing for full automatic driving.
Most likely, the SK map is powered by google becoz they do not have their own GPS system
Naver Maps really is something different. Used it while visiting SK for a week, was amazed by how seamless & convenient was the integration for the Metro.
It seems like you might not fully understand how Google Maps works. The app doesn’t lack features; rather, it’s about how well it connects with local systems. You mentioned that in China, the Naver map app shows real-time changes in traffic lights. This is possible because the app is directly integrated with the local traffic department, making it easier to implement such features. Google, on the other hand, is available in almost every country, unlike Naver, which is specifically built for SK and and some others same as china. While Google could technically implement similar features, they face challenges due to varying infrastructure levels across different countries. Google aims to provide a consistent experience globally, and some countries might lack the infrastructure needed to support these advanced features.
@DesiChichA-jq8hx What? Bottom line is still lack features
kay, I’ve always scratched my head about the obsession around the kislux book totes and their practicality, but this one is adorable!! Congratulations
I lived in a cluttered place myself and the last thing I want is this cluttered design on my apps too. Super app is understandable and make sense, but being a super app doesn't mean the UI needs to be cluttered as well. The e-commerce app in my country has that cluttered design as well and I ended up not even looking at it. This is psychological because it's overwhelming the brain with too much information
I love it! It seems more cluttered and confusing because it's also written in Chinese, but I'm sure if it were in English I would indeed find it very helpful that all the info & features of an app are visible on its home screen. I think this would also be more accessible for elderly people, because I have noticed my mom and grandparents often find it hard to find features or settings on mobile apps, because they have to click on multiple things to get there.
To simplify, western apps are separated because "there's an app for that" was our introduction to apps as a mindset and monopolies are generally frowned upon and competition is seen as a positive thing. If one app does something better than another we use that instead or use both (in the cases of lyft and uber checking for which has the best priced ride). People may use websites like Kayak or something to check prices of flights across many providers, but if you buy a ticket through them and something bad happens, the customer service is a middleman instead of the main provider.
This is really true, an all-in-one app sounds very scary.
@@user-yk7mn7we2i because it is scary. What happens when the one-true-app locks your account? You''ll be locked out of everything that app does. All your eggs in THEIR basket (not your basket). And they can lock you out on a whim.
the biggest irony is that in a “free market” capitalist system like in the west, monopolies eventually dominate over everything and there won’t be many alternatives. in china there’s these multipurpose apps but also more alternatives
@@chrissy4957 idk if there are as many alternatives in China on even a few fields I can find:
1. Food Delivery
Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Seamless, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Caviar, ChowNow, EatStreet, GoPuff, Bite Squad, Waitr, Munchery, Wolt
2. Music Streaming
Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, UA-cam Music, Tidal, Pandora, SoundCloud, Napster, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Shazam, Bandcamp, Musicolet, SoundHound, SiriusXM
3. Video Streaming
Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, UA-cam Premium, Peacock, Paramount+, Sling TV, fuboTV, Vudu, Tubi, Pluto TV, ESPN+, CBS All Access, Showtime, STARZ, Acorn TV, BritBox, Philo, Shudder, Mubi, Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Discovery+
4. Ride-Hailing/Transportation
Uber, Lyft, Curb, Via, Gett, Wingz, Zipcar, Turo, Maven, Lime, Bird, Spin, Revel, Scoot, Jump (now Lime), Helbiz
5. E-commerce/Online Shopping
Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, Newegg, Overstock, Zappos, Best Buy, Target, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, Bonanza, Poshmark, Depop, OfferUp, StockX, GoPuff, Instacart
6. Social Media
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X), Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Quora, Clubhouse, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Discord, Parler, MeWe, Gab, Mastodon, Triller, Byte, Kik, Houseparty, Vero, Minds, Rumble
7. Online Education/Elearning
Coursera, Udemy, edX, Khan Academy, LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare, MasterClass, Udacity, Pluralsight, Codecademy, Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Babbel, Brilliant, Treehouse, Simplilearn, Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning), Teachable, Podia, Kajabi, GoSkills, ABCmouse, BrainPOP, Edmodo, Saylor Academy
8. Productivity/Collaboration Tools
Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Notion, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Todoist, ClickUp, Wrike, Airtable, Miro, Coda, Smartsheet, Quip, Freedcamp, MeisterTask, nTask, Scoro, Paymo, Workzone, Chanty, Flock, Ryver
9. Cloud Storage
Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, Amazon Drive, Box, Backblaze, IDrive, SpiderOak, SugarSync, MediaFire, Zoolz, Livedrive, Egnyte, Citrix ShareFile, ElephantDrive, Syncplicity, Wasabi, ExaVault, FileCloud, IceDrive, NordLocker
10. Health & Fitness
MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Nike Training Club, Google Fit, Apple Health, Strava, Peloton, Calm, Headspace, 7 Minute Workout, Lose It!, Lifesum, Map My Run, Runkeeper, Sworkit, Fitbod, JEFIT, Daily Yoga, FitOn, Aaptiv, Asana Rebel, Fitplan, 8fit, MyPlate, StrongLifts 5x5, Zombies, Run!, RunGo, Charity Miles, Centr, Sweat.
Do you still think there are less alternatives and competitions going on in America (or any other countries with a capitalist system)?
@@chrissy4957 idk if there are as many alternatives in China on even a few fields I can find:
1. Food Delivery
Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Seamless, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Caviar, ChowNow, EatStreet, GoPuff, Bite Squad, Waitr, Munchery, Wolt
2. Music Streaming
Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, UA-cam Music, Tidal, Pandora, SoundCloud, Napster, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Shazam, Bandcamp, Musicolet, SoundHound, SiriusXM
3. Video Streaming
Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, UA-cam Premium, Peacock, Paramount+, Sling TV, fuboTV, Vudu, Tubi, Pluto TV, ESPN+, CBS All Access, Showtime, STARZ, Acorn TV, BritBox, Philo, Shudder, Mubi, Kanopy, Criterion Channel, Discovery+
4. Ride-Hailing/Transportation
Uber, Lyft, Curb, Via, Gett, Wingz, Zipcar, Turo, Maven, Lime, Bird, Spin, Revel, Scoot, Jump (now Lime), Helbiz
5. E-commerce/Online Shopping
Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Etsy, Newegg, Overstock, Zappos, Best Buy, Target, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, Shopify, Bonanza, Poshmark, Depop, OfferUp, StockX, GoPuff, Instacart
6. Social Media
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X), Snapchat, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Quora, Clubhouse, Telegram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Signal, Discord, Parler, MeWe, Gab, Mastodon, Triller, Byte, Kik, Houseparty, Vero, Minds, Rumble
7. Online Education/Elearning
Coursera, Udemy, edX, Khan Academy, LinkedIn Learning, Skillshare, MasterClass, Udacity, Pluralsight, Codecademy, Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, Babbel, Brilliant, Treehouse, Simplilearn, Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning), Teachable, Podia, Kajabi, GoSkills, ABCmouse, BrainPOP, Edmodo, Saylor Academy
8. Productivity/Collaboration Tools
Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Notion, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Todoist, ClickUp, Wrike, Airtable, Miro, Coda, Smartsheet, Quip, Freedcamp, MeisterTask, nTask, Scoro, Paymo, Workzone, Chanty, Flock, Ryver
9. Cloud Storage
Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud, Amazon Drive, Box, Backblaze, IDrive, SpiderOak, SugarSync, MediaFire, Zoolz, Livedrive, Egnyte, Citrix ShareFile, ElephantDrive, Syncplicity, Wasabi, ExaVault, FileCloud, IceDrive, NordLocker
10. Health & Fitness
MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Nike Training Club, Google Fit, Apple Health, Strava, Peloton, Calm, Headspace, 7 Minute Workout, Lose It!, Lifesum, Map My Run, Runkeeper, Sworkit, Fitbod, JEFIT, Daily Yoga, FitOn, Aaptiv, Asana Rebel, Fitplan, 8fit, MyPlate, StrongLifts 5x5, Zombies, Run!, RunGo, Charity Miles, Centr, Sweat.
Do you still think there are less alternatives and competitions going on in America (or any other countries with a capitalist system)?
I'm a French product designer for big corporations and I found your video very interesting! Thank you!! Very interesting this notion of Super App.
3:26 In India, we have similar apps (UPI apps for payments) that also offer chat features, although this functionality is not widely used and people prefer WhatsApp to chat.
I really appreciate the simplicity of the video.
It would be better if there was no background music.
Keep making these informative videos. Best wishes for you.
Great video! And very well presented that too, also well spoken. I love it!
I have noticed this and often wondered this myself. Absolutely part of it is the writing system, but to doesn't completely explain it. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
As an introvert just by looking at those screenshots my social battery was drained
agreed! INTP
It's not an introvert thing lol, a lot of introverts like complexity.
Also this introvert concept needs to be deleted, it groups very different people in one category
Dense - Simple, which one?
The introvert label ONLY implies social discomfort, it means nothing else, stop categorizing every aspect.
This video is amazing. Glad to see China content explained by Chinese people in English language and located in UA-cam platform.
(came across to this by youtune suggestion)
This comparison is only halfway there. If you realize that the super-apps are basically a package of apps in their own ecosystems, you should be comparing their UI to a system of similar level: the OS.
You wouldn't be comparing the super-app's main menu to a western app main menu; you should be comparing it to the desktop/home-screen menu of the phone. Your phone's home screen is usually filled with app icons, one for each feature you use your phone fore, just as much as the super-app is filled with icons for each feature.
So you should compare the super-app main menu to your home screen, while comparing a western app main menu to a sub-menu of the super-app.
great point! Although I think apps/suites like iTunes, Adobe and Microsoft Office would be closer to Chinese super apps than OS.
For iTunes, while it initially developed in the same fashion as Chinese super apps, Apple later actively divided its functionalities into seperate apps. Another example of this trend is the new Passwords app in IOS 18.
For Adobe and Microsoft, their apps started as seperate softwares that were only later bundeled into their Creative Cloud and Office 365.
Because super apps do exist in the West, I think comparing them to OS is not a perfect match, and there's must be a cultural mismatch in preferences between Chinese and Western consumers.
@@koka1571 I don't think the western examples you gave are on the same level as the chinese super apps.
The chinese super apps allow third party developers to make their own apps within them, truly like an OS.
To be equivalent, iTunes not only had to have a bunch of adjacent functionality bundled together, but also allow people to make their own mini apps to be installed and used inside iTunes.
Secondly, the different functionalities of the chinese super apps are in very different areas. They have both instant messaging and money transfer (essentially banking), for example. What functionalities did iTunes have that weren't adjacent to media consumption?
As a Chinese, I don't really like this design actually
I just graduated as an UX designer in Europe, and Asian design was never mentioned. i consume a lot of Asian media and I had to fight back the learnings at school because I was looking at designs that went against the things they teach us while still being successful. A big miss there.
An app being 'successful' (user adoption, user spending, user retention, etc) does not mean it therefor offers 'good' UX. Asian UX design is effective, Western UX design is efficient.
I'm hoping we do not import these Chinese design trends....
@@mightylotan If Elon gets his way with X, it would be the first Western "super app". We'll see though 🤷♂️
@@mightylotan It is no abut adopting them, but being able to design for different target groups regardless of their location.
i was taught about east asian interface designs briefly, but more so in the context that you should always design for a specific type of user because their expectations and understanding can be wildly different depending on factors like culture, identity, and circumstance.
unless you specifically design for east asian markets i don’t think it’s a particularly necessary wealth of knowledge you need to access.
in fact i was never taught shit about right to left interfaces like those with arabic copy. but there’s no insight i could glean from that unless i was explicitly designing for middle eastern markets
I hate that every click of the website create a new window for that click, instead of loading the new link onto the same page, in another word, just refresh it !
I've been in graphic design since 2014. Early on, I made things cluttered because it looks more complicated that way. As I got better, I became extremely minimal because "less is more". I kept boxing myself to what was "right" but really it's not so black and white. I've grown to have appreciation for all these different styles, even "out dated" western websites bring me inspo today.
An all in one app is way better at harvesting user data than a single app with a single function
This is true, because customers are more willing to exchange their personal info for more convenience after they have done it once on that very app. Just look at the difference between original Facebook and the Facebook of now with Marketplace, Instagram, and all the other websites and apps that offer easy registrations with Facebook.
and censoring user
So either one app harvests your data or 10 different apps all harvest your data? Lmao
@@Larry-Lobster putting all your info in the hand of a single company is more dangerous
I’m loving this series of asian UX/UI! Keep up the good work 🤩
This look like the websites back in the early 2000s. With irrelevant ads every corner of the screen
1000%
This could not have been better explained. Congratulations!
I don't think many people see Bruce Lee as an artist. They see him as a fighter, because that's what he did. He fought, with martial arts. He would be near the bottom of the barrel of choices for artists.
im always thinking about it when i use some chinese apps but never searched for the answer. Really cool infos, thank you
More functions is no excuse for ugly design
Extremely good video! Thank you for explaining the cultural and UI differences and the reasons for them!
Amazing work breaking down the cultural connection to the design.
I experienced a similar WeChat experience to your dad in China whilst trying to buy fruit from a streetside fruit vendor. I tried purchasing with cash and they looked at me like I was crazy.
Right?? It’s almost like a right of passage
Loved this video. Very interesting video concept, I had no idea that these super apps existed. I have to admit they do make intuitive sense. A great dive into a side of Chinese culture i never knew about. On a side note, you are adorable.
Actually, there are four significant reasons overlooked by this focus on culture - genuine underlying legal, administrative, and political causes for a lack of “super-apps” outside of China:
1. Antitrust & competition laws in developed nations prevent monopolies like WeChat from forming.
2. IP laws protect innovation by new apps from being copied by larger competitors and amalgamated into their own “super-apps” like WeChat.
3. Data protection laws protect consumers’ information from being circulated between multiple platforms within a “super-app”, and to outside third parties.
4. The lack of a truly free market in China strongly distorted historical app development, with “super-apps” more the result of specific centralized decision making, rather than the result of genuinely collective popular choices. Political will from the central government has had a stronger impact than allowed for in this video (e.g., internet blocking, no data privacy, censorship, etc.)
The last of these points is clearly demonstrated by the lack of “super-apps” in every other collectivist Asian culture, from Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong to Vietnam, Japan, and Singapore (all of which use non-Chinese apps).
super interesting points! Although I'd disagree with the empirical argument at the end. Samsung, Mitsubishi are great counter-examples to similar practices in other collectivist Asian cultures.
On the lack of super apps outside of China, I think suites like Adobe Cloud or Microsoft Office show that there's still some level of cultural preference for bundeled apps outside of China.
Some other commentors argued that Chinese super apps should be more appropriately compared with OS systems, which makes Apple's IOS (with Apple Wallet, Pages, News, Messages, Safari etc.) also "super apps" in a 'true' free market. I think Apple's recent antitrust allegations suggests that your observations are not exclusive to China.
But Wechat as a super app is super useful, I miss it. It was super convenient. I miss how easy and convenient life in China was with these super apps, I hope such possibilities are available for other countries too, you will see the difference
I think you’re quite wrong, and I’ll address all your points individually.
1. While true in theory, the existence of American tech giants that dominate the internet disprove this in practice. Google dominates, it’s a major if not the biggest player across so many apps, browser via Chrome, video player & social media via UA-cam, internet storage via Drive, office via Google Docs/Excel/etc. Just because WeChat keeps all its services on one app while Google spreads it out across multiple apps does not mean Google is not a near-monopoly. Also see Microsoft & Meta.
2. Not when it comes to “ideas” for apps. See how Instagram stole Snapchat’s concept of Stories. Snapchat, UA-cam, Insta, and more have tried to copy TikTok’s short-form content. I would love to see a single example of a software company successfully suing a competitor for “stealing” its idea for an app.
3. In the US? Lol no. Maybe in Europe where they take data protection and privacy more seriously, but legislation on data collection in the US is virtually non-existent.
4. This is the closest you have to a valid point. China’s great firewall (GFW) shut out many dominant Western apps from the Chinese market after they refused to comply with Chinese data legislation, creating the incentive for domestic brands to fill this space. By promoting domestic growth and innovation in the software space, Chinese people rely on Chinese made apps. This is connected to your point how other collectivist cultures don’t have “super apps”. I’d say it’s far more closer to that they don’t even have many native apps in the first place. There’s no incentive to develop a native Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese/etc messaging or video apps when WhatsApp or UA-cam already dominates everything.
So while you’re right that the Chinese government created the software vacuum through its GFW, Chinese people themselves chose WeChat and other super apps themselves, primarily for its convenience and efficiency. They’re tailored to a Chinese audience’s preference (esp for super apps), so Phoebe Yu’s point about culture is extremely relevant, far more relevant to any of the 4 things you mentioned.
For your last point, no super apps in other Asian countries.
Because other Asian countries don't even have IT industry!
Only 2 countries in this world have IT industry, which are USA and China!
Exactly, thank you for this comment
The underlying reason is that the only option for alphabetic characters is vertical arrangement, and the words are of different lengths and cannot be arranged horizontally.
I don't think this explains why it "works". The /technology/ works, but as for the design, it /hurts/ the experience.
Redundant buttons and clutter make the experience worse because it's hard to quickly read and navigate.
The reason this tech is like this is probably
- internal office politics (like, Janet is dating the boss, so we can't delete this button) and
- forces of monopolies (no one's competing with us so it doesn't matter).
Edit: Anyways, I'm glad you brought this to peoples' attention. I've thought about this a lot over the years...
you just think it "clutters" the experience because you're used to western design and it's a different style of interface and school of thought. A lot of text put together may be hard to read in roman alphabets, but that's not the case for mandarin where reading recognition is a lot faster.
@@shinluis I've used both interfaces a fair amount over the years.
I don't think reading recognition is in general faster for Mandarin - do you have reasons to believe this?
Edit: just to be clear, I think the video is really cool, and I hope she makes more! Very interesting stuff! Hope I’m not coming off as a totally terrible person, hahah…
@@shinluisA lot of text putting together is also hard to be read in Chinese words.
me on the other hand hates this "minimalism" design where I need to navigate 5-6 sub menus with properties under 'buttons' that doesn't make sense to be there.
Lost are the days where I could change my password under some Settings menu or under my Profile menu.
@@jmarcos06 Good point.
Apple hides things in random menus to give the illusion of simplicity, That can hurt the experience for users who want to do use advanced functions IMO.
Chinese apps/web seem to have button redundancies growing out their ears, though... Which I think probably hurts the experience, especially for grannies and kiddos or anyone who just wants to get things done and move on with their lives.
I'm probably an advanced user, but I think it probably makes sense to prioritize grannies and kiddos.
Thanks for an interesting video. Never thought of the Chinese app designs in that perspective.
I agree to your conclusion that when youre creating something, create with culture in mind. I work in Korea as a software engineer and do care a lot about user experiences of the products I contribute to.
How is WeChat different from just a browser with multiple tabs?
You cannot really multitask with a superapp. Let’s say at one moment you’re doing online shopping but then need to order something for lunch.
With singular superapp, you have to leave/close the online shop, go to the main page of the super app, and then go to online food order feature.
When apps are separate, I can just leave the online shop in the background, open online food order app, then go back to the online shop app in exact the same state as I left it.
Super app can actually have multiple window and maintain proper multitasking. However they’re usually aren’t as good or as polished to leaving the real phone OS handling the multitask.
Also superapp doesn’t really allow you to finely control what permission each app got.
You cannot really multitask with a superapp. Let’s say at one moment you’re doing online shopping but then need to order something for lunch.
With singular superapp, you have to leave/close the online shop, go to the main page of the super app, and then go to online food order feature.
When apps are separate, I can just leave the online shop in the background, open online food order app, then go back to the online shop app in exact the same state as I left it.
Super app can actually have multiple window and maintain proper multitasking. However they’re usually aren’t as good or as polished to leaving the real phone OS handling the multitask.
Also superapp doesn’t really allow you to finely control what permission each app got.
@@rommysoeli You're just doing it wrong, lol. 'Have to' close the app.
I love the way you explain. btw your face fascinates me in an inexplicable way
Lived in China for 7years and still use Chinese apps daily.
Actually I like the way Chinese apps are designed. I like the all in one concept, and that's why I took advantage of Wechat and scaled a big business on it.
Different design patterns should exist and that's okay.
But some of WeChat's rules are really difficult to use, and they consume a lot of memory and hard disk space on Android, forcing Chinese mobile phones to use 12GB or even 16GB of RAM
@@suki3815
My phones worked perfectly fine with 8gb ram or less.
Only had space issues after like 2yrs of use.
I do like the idea of the apps working in tandem with one another and the visual style is reminiscent of the old web. The combo meal analogy is also very good.
If implemented with productivity in mind, the 'clutter' can become 'information dense'.
10:20 Hate it so much because I'm a person who don't use many digital service on daily, so every time I open the app for doing something simple like ordering a drink, I get confused with all the ads and micro content. However one day If I live in a bigger city and need to install an app for every coffee shop, movie theater, restaurant v..v for coupon collecting or membership, I will prefer this kind of cluster f* app.
I'm a UX from Brazil, south America, and this approach to facilitate and have the "happy meal" on a supper app it would make a lot of sense, for elders or accessibility here. We consume a lot of Western design, which is very exclusive and we have many problems such as illiteracy, digital or otherwise. Thank you for the content 😸
Great insight. As a new product manager designing international platform app serving Chinese and the western world, i now noticed that I am pushing minimalism in my design too hard since I am familiar with Apple-ish design. I need to rethink culture and possibility of having 2 version of the same app.
the subject matter for each of your videos are so good and educating. It helps me alot in my design work
if i want eat - i go in eating app, if i want play, i go into app store. U dont eat in clothes shop or sleep in metro. Same thing here - 1 app - 1 purpose. simple as fck
This is like coming back to old yahoo search engine interface. In early 2000, search engines are all these cluttered designs. When google came to scene, they were the ones who popularized clean, minimalistic interfaces.
I’m kind of living for this over-cluttered style. It reminds me of the early internet websites
(western) ux designer here! one of the primary goals when observing users is to figure out what their mental mappings are, and what they intuitively want to accomplish. because if you can reduce cognitive load you improve a user’s experience. i can’t say for certain that ux designers in china/japan also try to reduce cognitive load, but it would certainly raise my eyebrows if they didn’t.
that’s the whole idea behind the “less is more” saying, less features means less scanning and thinking about a task you want to accomplish. so from that end i’d be super curious to know what the methodology ux designers in china/japan utilize to reduce cognitive load without reducing features!
They probably don’t care of reducing cognitive load, I doubt because UI clearly shows that they haven’t done so.
One-super app versus many apps is just an argument of how different countries allow monopolies to flourish
It is the opposite. There are existing monopolies in each sector and they don't let the new tech startups penetrate. So there wouldn't be a one-super app.
The conflicting point is that when every companies build a super app there is no one super app anymore
I also don't see what's the problem with using different apps. Okay, you need to switch between the apps. What's the problem though? Is it somehow different from switching between functionalities within a superapp? Convenience doesn't seem to be the case here, as integrations between the apps can provide just the same.
Taking the example from the video, the only issue I see with ordering a coffee is that mobile wallet required update. However, it's a problem with the wallet app that doesn't let you to use it without immediate update. I often see apps handle it well lately.
Phew!!!! The clutter designs are made first, then they are being justified as Super Apps. Super 👌👌
that kind of design gonna destroy my eyes 💀💀
I spent a couple of months in China and honestly, I don't think it is too hard to get used to. While it did irritate me at first, after using those few apps (Alipay, Wechat, Taobao, Meituan) for like 3 days, it wasn't even a hassle anymore, because it is just so convenient even if it is somewhat of a clutter or reminiscent of the early Internet lol With those 4 apps, you can almost assimilate seamlessly into their livelihood - well, digitally, at least. As for the pop-ups in the APPs, they are alright, especially when you compare them to those pop-ups on computer sites that asks you for your permissions and cookies, or wikipedia asking for donations.
Another thing that might destroy your eyes at first, but you grow accustom to quickly is: when you watch Chinese streams, there is an option to enable on-screen comments where you will see chat comments fly by across the screen in front of the stream. It used to bother me, but eventually, you just kinda automatically grow used to it. I remember coming back to the US and not being used to having to move my eyes to the right to read a Twitch chatbox lol
I think another important point - I believe some research paper also talks about it - is that Chinese language itself is very dense. Each character can represent a lot of information. So Chinese are very used to dense information environment, which kinda preps them for apps with dense information. This applies to Japanese as well.
It's an interesting take, but I feel this analysis is missing a few key points:
* Super Apps exist in China in the void created by the ban of the Google App Play Store. These apps are kind of creating their own "Android on top of Android".
* Are alternatives to super apps really available in China? If "dense & feature rich & mono-app" has no competition vs the western "minimalist & simple & multi-app", it's hard to tell if users actually prefer this option. They might be using it simply because it beats what came before (ex: cash, wire transfers, Debit Cards or simply nothing).
Here's a thought I had regarding the leapfrogging:
here in the West, people were quite used to modular systems due to their experience with computers. This is true on at least the level of "mouse/keyboard/screen/computer", but can be extended to the PC itself by choosing parts like graphics cards, CPUs, etc. The software side of things is then essentially a reflection of that: you have your home screen and you can select all the apps that you feel are necessary for you and arrange them in a way that makes the most sense to you.
If you skipped straight to the phone which is basically a complete box, perhaps you'd also expect all of its functionality to be laid out for you. Because to be quite honest: the way that all these little icons are laid out in these super apps are very reminiscent of a basic home screen to me.
This leads me to another thought: if you have a complete box, you have less (or perhaps no) options of changing parts of it. In a modular system, if you think that app XYZ isn't that good and there's a better alternative, switching is rather easy.
the west went for minimalism. THE EAST WENT FOR MAXIMALISM.
How should we be in the Middle East?
@@ArminAmiriNasab atheists
As someone who lives between China and Europe, I need to say that even though this kind of super-apps may be a very comprehensive concept, I prefer paying in cash and not needing to scan stuff and receive sms, and scan my documents to validate a mini-app extension, to "book" a ticket for a monument, all this when I am at the very entrance of that monument and there's no cue. China became a more excluding society because of the obligation of using those private means to access public services, and enormously excluding for tourists, if they even matter. There's an abuse on getting individuals info from a lot of webs before they even let you check if they are what you need, or if what they are supposed to offer was just true, and that makes the experience soo slow and annoying. Even though it may work in other aspects. Thanks for the video! :)
We have to remember that East Asian pictorial language allows for “cluttered” UI because you can use less characters to express more meaning. The same cannot be done with latin based languages. Chinese, for example, can use four characters to express the same meaning as a full 10 or even 15 English word sentence. You can extrapolate how much more information can be shown on screen using Chinese characters than English words. Eastern Asian app design takes full advantage of this.
Edit:
We also have to consider that information processing speed is in high demand for countries with high pop density. There is no time to switch between apps when you’re trying to buy something because there is over 20 people behind you in line on a daily basis. So there is a demand to process payment as quickly as possible so the line doesn’t clog up because one person has to constantly switch apps. Thus, all of the functions get centralized into one super-app, allowing information processing speed to dramatically increase.
Good video, but I have to lean towards the common opinion here. It works and people are probably just used to it, but I don’t think it is better.
You're absolutely right, she is justifying the status quo because, well, that's the status quo, so it must be a better UX for Chinese people, right?
There’s nothing collectivist about cross-industry monopolies (edit to clarify: they add value to neither the community nor the individual). Western countries have distributed economies and antitrust laws to prevent these apps forming. I don’t think it would fly here to allow one company to have dominating control over every aspect of constituents’ lives. It’s already problematic when your Uber account is deactivated. These apps thrive in authoritarian or planned economies.
It’s true that it’s more effort for the consumer to have multiple apps, but it is something that Phone OEMs can design around and the home screen exists for a reason and it already looks like these apps for a reason. Standards exist for the interchange of data between these apps and the services that use them will eventually win.
It’s true that phone OEMs have too much control over users but that’s why there is so much legal action between governments, OEMs and social networks.
I also hate the UX of QR-codes-to-pay. I can see the appeal if you don’t want to participate in international banking standards, but at least use NFC or something secure and more reliable.
Eh, I have lived in the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, South Korea and China. I quite like the all in one ( wechat in China, Kakao in South Korea), it just works super well with the way my brain works. I like how well things are integrated. In the Netherlands everything has an app...but things are so disjointed and messy compared to the asian all in one that I just do not bother. I hate it whenever I am forced to use the app version of some Dutch company. Their UX design suuuucks. And they get away with it because these damn companies feel barely any pressure to improve because they are oligarchs who do not compete with each other in practice only on paper, their only goal is to lock you into their crappy ecossytem, so they all suck. Meanwhile in Asia, integration has to be good with the super app because otherwise people just switch to the more convenient option in the same app. these super apps they are basically like a mini OS whereby other companies offer services within the app. But the mindset is also different here in asia: convenience& integration rather than capture & lock in.
If every app has everything in a super app, then nobody has an actual monopoly of it. The irony of your comment is that the western set up is actually the one encouraging more monopoly.
Using your example with Uber. You can only request an Uber via Uber app while in my experience in China, you can request a ride service in several apps, you can even request official taxi services in many apps and even in the official ride sharing app you can choose between an official taxi or a regular driver.
I have experienced more challenges in "choosing" in the western market than in the asian market. I was banned from Paypal long ago without any clear reason and tried to contact them and they just kept repeating a letter like a robot. At that time, there were not many paying options from my country, so I ended giving up on my purchase. So I don't buy that bs argument that western environment is less monopolistic.
I lived in China for 2 years and the actual challenge was being overwhelmed with options when doing online shopping, i.e. While here, most of the market is heavily influenced by Amazon, which ironically failed in China, since couls not keep with so many competition and low prices, while here they can charge higher delivery prices.
Nice video thanks! Your audio has a lot of echo, and there's quite a lot of noise on the mic. It's subtle, but it makes the difference between videos that feel amateur and those that feel professional.
Hope to see more content in future! 🙏
one party + mass surveillance = super app
this is a fantastic video!! great pacing and presentation of info, really kept me engaged throughout
thank God iOS was made by US and not China