The Kawaiization of Product Design

https://vanschneider.com/the-kawaiization-of-product-design

by avadhoot • 6 years ago

170 148 6 years ago

foxyv• 6 years ago

This reminds me of the anime series Psycho Pass. Police officers wear holographic suits to look like theme park mascots so they don't disturb people. Then they end up shooting criminals with a laser cannon that makes them explode like bags of blood flashing to a boil in a microwave.

milchek2• 6 years ago

I noticed this a lot more on signs and posters when I moved to Singapore earlier this year. Back in Melbourne, design seemed a lot more varied, but everything here is the same style. My guess is that a lot of the signage is from government agencies here who hire the same design teams?

Anyway, design trends come and go. We have seen this in the last couple of decades with the heavy skeuomorphic designs found in earlier Apple products and then later the “flat design” trend.

I’m curious what the next trend will be?

emmanuel_1234• 6 years ago

That is one thing that I find concerning about Asia (having lived both in Singapore and Hong Kong). Messages from various government agencies are written and illustrated like kid books. It makes me uncomfortable that either 1. grown-ups are so infantilized that they need to be addressed like that or 2. that governments feel their grown-ups are too stupide to be talked to normally.

janekm2• 6 years ago

3. a lot of the messaging is kid-inclusive (e.g. warnings about getting your hands crushed in subway doors)? At least in Hong Kong and Japan you will see a lot of kids using public transport independently, can't remember about Singapore.

fxtentacle3• 6 years ago

Having lived in Asia and Singapore for a while, I can assure you that they don't infantilize their people.

In fact, some of the government reminders can seem cruel to westerners. For example, public signs that count the number of drunk driving deaths per month.

The reason why everything important in Singapore has to be in picture language is because they have so many nationalities living together.

If I remember correctly, the subway signs were already in English, Malaysian and Chinese. But there's also plenty of Indian, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Thai citizens. And of course Japanese tourists.

An 8-language sign starts to be unwieldy, so I applaud their approach of using graphics instead.

IkmoIkmo• 6 years ago

I do not recall the metro warning signs in France. I do remember them in Japan. It's because the Japanese ones were funny and draw you in to a story.

You could have the following without the pictures: https://pradt.co/imgs/poster/pleasedoit02.gif

There's different styles to this, there's variations which are more Disney or Anime like, what's the issue? The point is to draw attention, I don't see what the need is for the ostensible seriousness, if it's not effective at educating and drawing people in to your message.

swyx2• 6 years ago

how are you enjoying Singapore?

milchek2• 6 years ago

I like it. This is our first time moving to live and work in a country away from Melbourne, and we took a while to decide where we would do it with Singapore always topping the list.

That said, it hasn't been easy. Grappling with all the usual tasks with getting set up in a new country + dealing with the pandemic and "Circuit Breaker" has been a challenge for our family, but like everyone else, we're doing our best to stay positive and adjust.

voxelghost• 6 years ago

Everything looks like clipart and templates these days.

Animats• 6 years ago

Even Apple is taking small steps in that direction. See their web site.

Until recently, Apple's design aesthetic seemed to be borrowed from Bang and Olufsen audio gear from the 1980s. Hard-edged, stark, monochrome, good materials, barely visible controls. Sony long had a playful look, but lost out. Will Apple go with the playful look, or fight it? So far, Apple has lightened up enough to ship phones that have colored cases, but no decorative artwork.

kibibu• 6 years ago

It's older than that. Jony Ive is/was an unabashed Braun disciple

narag2• 6 years ago

I've been trying to remember where I read this word a long time ago, like decades. Was it a well known brand? Music? Electronics? Sports?

TheOtherHobbes• 6 years ago

Kawai make pianos.

Not the same as kawaii, which means "cute".

narag2• 6 years ago

Thank you. My memory is really bad. Guess who owned an upright one for a few years.

TeMPOraL9• 6 years ago

In Poland there was a video game magazine when I was a kid, and they had a section about Japanese culture, entitled "Kawaii".

p_l• 6 years ago

It later became legendary first anime-related self-standing magazine in Poland, with cult following.

fxtentacle3• 6 years ago

I agree with the authors implied reason that Kawaii is a way for people to escape reality.

It first became popular in Japan, where there is also Hikkomori (adults refusing to leave the house), Grasseaters (young men refusing to date), and lots of fantasy harem videos on TV.

And now that the pressure increases in western societies, we see similar problems and similar escape mechanisms.

FYI alcohol is not accessible to people under 21 in Japan, thereby denying them one of the most popular western stress relieve drugs.

trhway2• 6 years ago

Kawaii is a way for people to escape reality

i'd say that our [social/political/economic] reality is getting Kawaiized (that also dovetails with the recent simulacrum discussion), and that Kawaiization of reality is getting reflected in particular in design.

7leafer3• 6 years ago

Are mortgages, loans, taxes and fines getting Kawaiized, though?

saagarjha• 6 years ago

FYI alcohol is not accessible to people under 21 in Japan, thereby denying them one of the most popular western stress relieve drugs.

Well, it’s not supposed to be accessible to people under 21 in my state either.

fxtentacle3• 6 years ago

Here in Germany, you can legally buy beer at 16...

vinay427• 6 years ago

western stress relieve drugs

Alcohol isn't actually western, unless you meant that the specific beverages consumed by some Japanese youth are from western countries or just that alcohol is common for stress relief in the west, in which case I misread. It has been found to have existed in various parts of Asia for millennia (rice wine from about 7000 BC in China, distillation first recorded in India, etc.).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_alcoholic_drinks

scottishcow2• 6 years ago

The legal drinking age in Japan is 20 (will be lowered to 18 in 2022), but attitudes toward teenagers drinking alcohol has historically been extremely lax here.

mhd• 6 years ago

"And now"? Pressure in most societies has been huge, and every available stress relief was sought. That's how we got the gin epidemic in the 18th century.

One might say that most "design" concepts are there to escape reality (and quite a lot of "art"), by creating a substitute reality that's more pure and clear than messy reality. Both for practical (ease of use, readability) reasons and to increase sales/aesthetic appreciation. That's true for Kawaii as it is for Bauhaus or Flat Design.

knolax6• 6 years ago

It's also not accessible under the age of 21 in America, the largest and most influential Western country.

duncanawoods5• 6 years ago

I thought this would be more about how emojis have invaded products.

I recognise their communication value but they are aesthetic disasters (colour, dated cartoon style, cacophony) and they are real lowest common denominator expressions - often the equivalent of a fart noise or a “+1”. To support emoji you hand over a huge slice of product aesthetic and expressivity to something which in all essentials, is very childish.

I looked at reddit recently and all the emoji awards that can even apply background animations like flames gave me the strong impression that “this is not for adults”. For something smaller that might be a fine choice but reddit’s opportunity seems to be much larger as the pre-eminent threaded discussion site across all demographics and if anything I suspect longer form discussion skews older.

haywirez• 6 years ago

“this is not for adults”

That’s a critical feature.

mattlutze• 6 years ago

Emoji are a native part of the vocabulary of a couple generations now. What you might be noticing is a platform signaling that it's supporting those folks as well.

Every Millennial is an adult, as are many Gen Z'ers, and these plus the first all-21st century generation are going to have come to expect emoji to exist and existed in digital spaces where emoji are a part of the jargon.

Why would it make sense for Reddit to force these people to communicate less completely than they are used to doing?

duncanawoods5• 6 years ago

I fully acknowledge they are part of language now and it’s a much harder decision to not support them, my point relating to the topic is that they aren’t simply new words, or an interaction pattern or a ligature but kawaii design elements that are very viral - driving further spread of poop emoji aesthetic.

I hope that they continue to evolve into typefaces that allow for more elegant design decisions.

There is a lot of value in the emoji concept if we could separate from their design. For example, I created a reasoning tool prototype driven by emoji - it was just so ugly I had to burn it with fire. It was also inconsistent across platforms.

bb1232• 6 years ago

I think it goes back a lot longer than that - humans have been using symbols to express feelings for thousands of years. Written language is really the child of that. Personally I think humans will always communicate via little pictogram symbols, regardless of how perfect written communication with words is. There is something very innate about two eyes and an upward curved line meaning happy - and lots of similar examples. Emojis are just a form of this.

swiley3• 6 years ago

I really wish emoji were monochromatic like the rest of the text. GNU unifont is like this but I don’t think most people like that.

radoslawc• 6 years ago

This reminds me what was happening in forums in "internet forums era". At some point in most of them users could make their own footer, so many users put there various "badges" from ones stating that they are proud vim users to what graphics card and power supply they have in their PC. Most of the time it was actually more content than post itself. Add to this animated emoticons and it was actually harder to read and focus on content which kind of defeats the purpose of internet forums.

duncanawoods5• 6 years ago

Yup - also makes me think of a parallel with medieval illuminated scripts. We could print all books today with trees growing in the margin or whatever but we don’t because a pleasant reading experience depends more on simplicity and quality of the basics (typeface, typesetting, print and paper) rather than ornamentation.

TeMPOraL9• 6 years ago

One of the two big reasons I find places like HN or Reddit much better for discussing things than old phpBB-style forums. The other, biggest one being tree-structured threads instead of flat lists.

I'm first to customize stuff for myself, but I've grown to believe that public-facing customization is best left severely limited when dealing with general audience.

rogual• 6 years ago

“this is not for adults”

Sometimes I feel like adulthood is a social performance that people just aren't that into these days.

I mean, sure, there's biological adulthood, which is a bit more well-defined, but in the usual sense of the word, as a collection of tastes, behaviours, modes of expresssion, etc., perhaps it's just going out of style.

duncanawoods5• 6 years ago

In my mind, adult taste is not just fashion but integrates judgement of quality and function. The adult has specific goals which are often benefited by greater order and less noise. A child doesn't share those goals. Their focus is play and seek pure stimulation and delight in noise.

It's probably true that adulthood is increasingly playful which feeds into tricky questions about whether this is infantalisation or something more positive like increased authenticity now that we are freed from arbitrary constraints of decorum such as dress-codes, rigid hours, cap doffing etc.

whytaka• 6 years ago

I think it’s really just that digital art has become so prolific and cutesy things are just the easiest to make. Every company wanted minimalism but now everyone looks the same so we have to garnish it with cheap art so it’s not too minimal and now everyone is doing that.

xondono• 6 years ago

I think part of it it’s the “build your design from blocks” mentality that is so dominant nowadays.

There’s a lot of ways to do hard aesthetics, but pretty much one way to do kawaii (roundness, pastels, flat appearance). Joining kawaii-sh art from different sources is way easier than joining other kinds of graphics.

I would guess that a significant part of the trend is people following the path of least resistance.

m4632• 6 years ago

I can see the other side of "building from a theme" or "building from a template", where you can choose a template that works for everyone, even old people, the colorblind, or even completely blind.

It is better than the 90's web pages where people could choose any foreground or background color, and people were free to choose yellow on green.

js82• 6 years ago

On a related note, I wish product designers stop to cater to beginners. That is, stop equating easy of use and ease of use by somebody who never used the product.

Somebody who sees the product for the first time will have very different requirements than somebody who is seeing it every day. The latter is able to learn some productivity tricks, that might be opaque to beginner, but make the product actually easier to use.

AmericanChopper4• 6 years ago

I think the product designers have the right approach here. Having worked in a lot of large corporates, you find a lot of people who are just experts in using some over complicated piece of garbage software. If I have to attend a 3 day training seminar just to figure out the basic functionality of your app, then I think you’ve done it wrong.

Software should make it as easy as possible for people to immediately start doing something useful with it. Make advanced features available via the API, and make sure logs and APM are easy to ingest. Advanced users likely won’t have any interest in your web interface anyhow.

swiley3• 6 years ago

I’d disagree. Some things are hard and the ergonomics makes it worth a little confusion. CAD software like xcircuit is a good example of this (although they definitely could stand to make the save dialog a little more intuitive.)

js82• 6 years ago

Just to clarify, I don't think that they have to be mutually exclusive. But focusing only on new users is wrong, IMHO.

But when I hear your justification, maybe the blame should fall on managers. They should be the ones to understand that expertise increases productivity and therefore can be useful.

_ZeD_• 6 years ago

good luck: their job is to acquire new users, not to keep the old ones

ethanbond• 6 years ago

This is certainly not “baked into” product design or a product designer’s role. That’s a decision that someone makes.

Nextgrid• 6 years ago

Being more productive would mean less time spent on the product, thus less "engagement". Not catering to idiots means less new users signing up and thus less "growth".

Nowadays nobody gives a shit about solving a problem or actually getting paid customers; it's all about growth and engagement now.

1_player• 6 years ago

Yes! I always hear on HN "grandma wouldn't understand" a particularly complex interface that hasn't been dumbed down to its extremes.

Can we have some products and interfaces that are tailored for power users instead? I mean the ones that need your biggest plan and are creating real stuff with your apps.

It's condescending to only cater to new users and dumbing everything down. One needs to remember even grandma is a power user of some niche.

GuB-422• 6 years ago

The worst part is that grandma doesn't understand these childish interfaces.

What grandma needs (according to my experience with my own grandma) is something that is consistent and doesn't change.

It doesn't matter if there are 50 buttons as long as the button she needs is always at the same place looks the same and does the same thing.

Old people are slow learners but they are not stupid. They can handle complex interfaces if you give them the time. What they can't handle is interfaces that change every week, especially those with hidden elements, no matter how simple they look.

TeMPOraL9• 6 years ago

Strongly seconded. I get the desire to simplify the initial UI for the beginners, but for the sake of all that's holy, think of people who're using your product regularly. Like salaried employees sitting in front of it eight hours a day, five days a week, for years.

Power users aren't born, they're created by exposure and a minimum of aptitude. Power features need to be put in places where people who use software will eventually discover them. Hiding them, or not creating them at all, is essentially wasting people's lives and money.

An example I like to use is when I visited my wife's workplace once, and while waiting for her, was asked to help with a task that involved changing some values on couple hundred entries in their e-commerce management system. They expected it to take me two or three hours, as this is how much time they spend on it every couple days. I completed it in 15 minutes, after discovering a well-hidden feature for batch-editing entries. I shared the knowledge, and that simple visit saved them countless man-hours ever since. How much more time would've been saved if that batch-editing option was more prominent, and explained in-app, instead of diminished and hidden in a place where someone who didn't know what to look for would never find it?

And what your users do with time saved is of course their decision. They may use it to complete other work, enriching their employers. Or they may blow it watching funny cat videos on YouTube, improving their mental well-being. Point is, they have a choice, they have an option to grow and get better, do their jobs faster, with less effort and less mistakes. That's the promise of technology, that's the whole point for building software in the first place.

lunias2• 6 years ago

It never makes sense to me when one of my ideas gets swatted down for being: "more of a thing for power users". Is that not exactly who you want to reward? The most devoted users of your product?

davidivadavid• 6 years ago

Power users are not necessarily devoted to your product, they might just have to use it.

While a feature being targeted at power users is certainly not a reason to swat it down in itself, feature prioritization is usually based on impact. And it's usually easier to get impact by improving the satisfaction of a broader user base. That's why many product people tend to favor optimizing not for power user, not for beginners, but for the average user. (This whole discussion is kind of a red herring tbh).

Of course, you need a balance, and getting people to really love a product often takes things such as smartly implemented power-user features.

type-22• 6 years ago

Why did he decide to call it kawaiization? I don't think this kind of design is inspired from japan, even though the rounded corners, soft color palette can be considered "cute", they exist because they are perceived as "modern web design". I put it in quotes but honestly I don't hate it. It is pleasing to the eyes.

knolax6• 6 years ago

Agreed, there's no additional meaning to the world kawaii that isn't already captured by the word cute. Actual Japanese websites look nothing like what the author describes.

type-22• 6 years ago

Pretty much. Though it is a very international thing, I think chinese websites in general look more "kawaii" if we use the world like the author(?). For eg. take look at www.ui.cn

jotm• 6 years ago

It got you to read it. It got it to the front page on HN.

whywhywhywhy2• 6 years ago

I don't think this kind of design is inspired from japan

It's almost entirely a west coast US style if anything, nothing to do with kawaii. I even find it weirdly similar to 90s software illustrations, the ancient Adobe Acrobat branding comes to mind [0]

[0] https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51wSPfBcRRL...

sandov• 6 years ago

If clay figures are the price to pay for clean, spaced user interfaces and readable text, then bring it on.

This is the first time that I actually like a design trend in the web. Thank god we got rid of those barely readable thin grey fonts on white backgrounds.

wirrbel• 6 years ago

that was the worst. Don't get me started on the trend for large line-spacing that makes text as unreadable as the duoble-spaced preprints I just refuse to read.

m4632• 6 years ago

You have forgotten 90's web pages, not from templates and designed by edit-in-the-browser where you can choose any color for foreground and background (and people usually did)

knolax6• 6 years ago

Author could've just called it cutification without wasting a paragraph to explain a common loanword. It's not like these trends actually come from Japan. Look at some of these top 20 Japanese sites[0], none of them look like what the author's describing.

[0] https://m.yahoo.co.jp/ https://smt.docomo.ne.jp/ https://www.rakuten.co.jp/

spyckie2• 6 years ago

The author is probably referring to a general trend in Japan where simple, cute, slice of life ambience is becoming very popular in various media like video games and anime.

knolax6• 6 years ago

The general trend of Kawaii things also looks nothing like the websites he's talking about. For example, they lack the distinctive hand-drawn cartoon art style like this site has[0].

[0] http://www.mitchiri-neko.com/

carrolldunham• 6 years ago

The deformed, grotesque, inflated humanoids they use in flat design are opposite to 'kawaii', and opposite in motivation. Instead of hitting your instincts with a supernormal cuteness/sweetness stimulus, it's supposed to desensitise you to 'differences' in humans. It's ideologically tinged

thih9• 6 years ago

it's supposed to desensitise you to 'differences' in humans.

Why did you put differences in quotes? Do you mean something else than just differences?

knolax6• 6 years ago

He's offended by the fact that they're not all white. It's the real reason why people are acting like they're outraged by vector drawings of people: some of them happen to be brown.

mdre3• 6 years ago

Yeah, I'm wondering from time to time, what's going on with the strange cult of the small head. I've seen that illustrators call this trend 'big limbs', but I call it 'small head'. As in 'Let's not focus on this big head of yours, shrink your head, just go with the flow'. Get rid of your brain, your thoughts, your personality, everyone is OK. Looks like it's the millenial's equivalent of the boomers' large nose cartoony characters (or maybe a shitty pastel family-friendly castrated version of Robert Crumb's body fantasies) and it will pass. However, I think this one's still in its prime time and gonna keep pissing me off for quite a long time. Maybe I should try harder to propagate the style I enjoy- giant head, no body, tiny limbs.

TeMPOraL9• 6 years ago

It seems that a good chunk of the web design community went bananas on Humaaans[0], probably because Facebook started using similar small-headed, monstrous-limbed, absurdly deformed human caricatures. I absolutely abhore this trend, and feel the same way you do: it deemphasizes what's truly unique about humans - our brains, our minds, our personalities.

[0] https://www.humaaans.com/

GuiA2• 6 years ago

The way these things tend to go is more that some illustrator does something a little different, others see it and like it, it spreads, and it’s now the new mainstream, until it all repeats again.

The ideological bent you choose to read into it is... interesting.

FWIW “large heads tiny limbs” has been a thing many times in the history of art, look at eg late 1800s caricatures

mc322• 6 years ago

I dunno about that. Kawaii characters are all the above: large heads, large eyes and if female “glamour” to top it off.

mdre3• 6 years ago

So it's the exact opposite of what's trending in western webdesign illustration now.

GuiA2• 6 years ago

Your comment ends at your claim but you do not provide any sources, evidence, or reasoning.

GregarianChild• 6 years ago

See also the recent related HN discussion [1] about "Corporate Memphis" which is orthogonal in principle from Kawaii, but in practise often overlapping.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22890877

scottishcow2• 6 years ago

This is tangential to the author's argument but it's amusing to see how the word "kawaii" has taken a life of its own in the West.

In Japan we often make gratuitous use of English words (yokomoji, lit. "sideways-written characters") to make things sound more interesting than they really are, seems like it works the other way around too.

GuB-422• 6 years ago

In France too, English words are commonly used to make things sound more interesting, more modern.

Especially hilarious when management uses English words, often improperly, when a perfectly adequate and commonly used French word exists.

Maybe it is a global trend all over the the world since English became the de facto international language.

Befterriager• 6 years ago

In France too, [...] hilarious when management uses English words

Recently (well... back when going to the office was still a thing) I had a meeting with a senior manager at our company. At the end of the meeting, he grabbed his iPhone and said "I am going to take a selfie of the whiteboard" (in French except for the word 'selfie') thinking that meant any kind of picture.

f1refly• 6 years ago

We got the same thing happening in germany as well and i don't know a single person who thinks it sounds good. The (typically) senior PMs seem to be oblivious how everyone's making fun of them behind their backs because of how ridiculous they sound.

satvikpendem2• 6 years ago

Also hilarious is the opposite, French being used in English feels more sophisticated. It just has un je ne sais quoi about it.

marcusjt• 6 years ago

"or we see a puppy and have an urge to squeeze it" - stroke or cuddle perhaps, but SQUEEZE?!

hellofunk• 6 years ago

That’s actually just a natural response, have you ever seen how a child impulsively and strongly squeezes a teddy bear?

anotheryou• 6 years ago

mention swiss design too maybe? https://creativemarket.com/blog/swiss-design-history-example...

It's just less soft and round

tobr• 6 years ago

Recently discussed, an article with an almost synonymous title: “On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015)”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089

everdrive2• 6 years ago

I’m not sure I’d call this “kawaii,” as that has a particular (and often cringey) connotation.

But, there is something deeply unappealing about this style. I’m not sure I can even describe it properly. It just reminds me of the most boring parts of my childhood: the aesthetic of dentist office waiting rooms, and middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology.

My past association with this sort of aesthetic is so innoffensively boring, I almost can’t even stand to look at it. And, as and adult, it no longer strikes me as just boring, but also insidious in the way that all marketing is insidious: it promises one thing, and behind the marketing is something else. A pleasant and inoffensive advertisement is in actuality just a regular old business who wants your money. There’s (usually) nothing evil the business, but of course the feeling portrayed by the marketing is a lie.

enriquto• 6 years ago

I’m not sure I can even describe it properly. It just reminds me of the most boring parts of my childhood: the aesthetic of dentist office waiting rooms, and middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology.

But you just provided an excellent description of that style!

thedanbob• 6 years ago

I think you've nailed it. It's the business version of "let's make learning fun!" Even the article mentions this:

Bank interfaces use pastels, rounded corners and soft drop shadows to make mundane or unpleasant tasks more "fun.”

I think I lean more toward your position than the article's. I would probably refer to this trend as the infantilization of product design.

Edit: I was wondering why I had that particular word in my head. A comment further down:

Recently discussed, an article with an almost synonymous title: “On Infantilization in Digital Environments (2015)”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22490089

ComodoHacker• 6 years ago

Yes, infantilization is the right term. And it's main function is to suppress critical thinking of the product.

coldtea2• 6 years ago

I’m not sure I’d call this “kawaii,” as that has a particular (and often cringey) connotation.

Kawaii is great within the culture it created it (and not cringey, in fact, cringey is a cringey neologism applied to everything these days).

But this is definitely not Kawaii - doesn't have any major kawaii characteristics as known. Cute in some way != kawaii (which might mean "cute" etymologically, but refers to a specific aesthetic).

Your description "middle school pamphlets aimed at teaching kids about sociology" is spot on (at least concerning the human-like figures and color tones).

mc322• 6 years ago

I think you’re being too narrow in application. People exclaim kawaii liberally —about as liberally as “oishi” for food delicious or just so-so.

ulrikrasmussen• 6 years ago

Completely agree. When I see a web page with this style, I just know that I'll have to dig really deep to find any concrete information about what the tech is actually about. There might be a link with the caption "how X works", but it will almost certainly take me to a simplified list of superficial features along the lines of "achieves 20% more goodness" instead of telling me anything about how the product actually functions.

vbtemp• 6 years ago

This type of design also deeply repulses me.

At a prior start up where I worked I fought against it with all my might. I call it "infantile simulacra" design -- rather than simply making a design to convey information in a clear and simple fashion and thereby treating their user with respect, it instead invites the reader and/or viewer to experience it as if they are a cartoonified, infantalized version of themselves... and thereby implying that company or service views their users as naive children too.

flohofwoe• 6 years ago

The most "dissonant" example of this design- (or rather, propaganda-) style I've seen yet was in Shanghai, where "law enforcement rules" signs in public places were often done in this "cute style". It really drove the point home of living in a modern Orwellian surveillance state which rules over its people with an iron fist (or rather with a cutesy oversized night stick).

52-6F-62• 6 years ago

It reminds me of this kind of design (pre-web): https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=80s%2F90s+geometric+designs...

And may be about as lasting as it...

So even though I don't mind it at all—as stated, it's inoffensive on the surface—I think you hit the nail on the head.

vangelis• 6 years ago

This is worse than "kawaii". JP mascots actually pleasant to look at [1].

[1] https://mondomascots.com/index.php/category/japan/

Hokusai• 6 years ago

It could be just a trend, or it could be we are becoming more human, more childlike because we're tired of being grownups.

This conclusion completely misses the point. What has changed is what "growing up" means. I see that many people around me in their late thirties care more about the environment, care more about the mental health of their children, are more playful and are better at their jobs that previous generations.

Suffering is part of adult life, that is a sad truth. But, to make life dull and hard to look like an adult is plain wrong and inverts cause and effect. A somber life without enjoyment does not show that you are "being a grownup". To be playful, to enjoy life, to want to learn and grow are characteristics not just of children but of balanced smart adults.

Given the context of the world around us, we are searching for positivity and comfort, and that's why we add emojis to our spreadsheets.

Like any human being before us, like any living organism that has reproduced on Earth to look for comfort is the natural and responsible thing to do. Do you see lions hunting more that they need? Do you see plants growing away from the sun? Sometimes there is trade offs and you choose the lesser evil, but suffering when not needed is a dangerous stupid idea.

jeegsy2• 6 years ago

A somber life without enjoyment does not show that you are "being a grownup"

Was there ever really a time when ppl thought this was what growing up meant?

diffrinse• 6 years ago

It's the "boomer" fantasy of what their parents and grandparents were doing before them. Hence why movies in the 60s/70s began to carry anti-authority "live your life" messages more and more until we're saturated in them at this point generations later.

GoblinSlayer• 6 years ago

Round corners, nice. Hope next they will figure out 3d buttons and how to draw humans.

whywhywhywhy2• 6 years ago

Literally nothing in this article could be described as "kawaii", kawaii is meant to invoke the same feelings you'd get from looking at a cute kitten. None of these illustrations do that or set out to do that.

"Corporate Memphis" is one way I've seen this described more accurately [0].

[0] https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-l...

fomine32• 6 years ago

+1 as Japanese. I never heard this type of styles called as "kawaii".

Invictus0• 6 years ago

I think the reason the cuteness is unnerving is because these sites are selling tools. It would be weird to buy a hammer covered in some soft fuzzy material, so why are these digital tools designed to look like children's sites? Moreover, why do they obfuscate key product specifications and functions in favor of vague promises of increased productivity (more goodness as one comment said)? I think the answer is that the low hanging SAAS fruit has mostly been taken and all the new SAAS apps have an increasing smaller niche and therefore increasingly smaller value proposition.

satvikpendem2• 6 years ago

See related, the Dribbbilization of design (2013): https://www.intercom.com/blog/the-dribbblisation-of-design

omnimus• 6 years ago

This is it more than anything. Author is complaining about cute trend comming up that he probably dislikes yet the bigger problem is almost complete unification of design that follows trends.

It's the maximal safe choice, ultimate lack of imagination and fear of experimenttion. I guess makes sense business wise?

By the way its not like van Schneider (author of the article) is some kind of daring pushing the envelope designer. He might not make things cute but overall makes pretty trendy dribbly stuff.

7leafer3• 6 years ago

It's all design for hordes of mediocre cheap designers

yowlingcat• 6 years ago

As other commentators have mentioned, the analogy to "kawaii" is inaccurate and inappropriate; it's much closer to what's been termed Corporate Memphis[1] than kawaii. Key differences:

- Corporate Memphis uses an abridged contrast ("flat") full range palette that is meant to a) be legible and b) not stand out. Human forms are flattened, with intentionally minimized, abstract differentiation between entities. This makes sense because the emphasis is on legibility and universal visual communication, not flair.

- Kawaii uses uses an expanded range palette with a lot of emphasis on pastels and cel shading to create a 2.5D world that is probably aesthetically closer to Surrealism. Kawaii human forms are caricatures, full of cartoonish distortions. The whole point is expression, quirkiness, flair and alternate reality building.

[1] https://qz.com/quartzy/1728767/why-editorial-illustrations-l...

tompccs• 6 years ago

Arguably Google started this trend - it had a multicoloured logo, their head office was called a "campus", they had beanbags, etc. It has defined a generation of corporate messaging: non-threatening, childlike simplicity. Compare and contrast companies called things like "INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES", built at a time when corporations wanted to exude power, scale, financial strength, and technical brilliance.

aikinai• 6 years ago

Doesn't negate the rest of your point, but just for your information, business parks have long been called campuses; that's not a Google or infantile thing.

beager• 6 years ago

Our app designs have become soft, sweet, inoffensive. Bank interfaces use pastels, rounded corners and soft drop shadows to make mundane or unpleasant tasks more "fun.” Animojis have taken over our chats, and our productivity tools are starting to look like Animal Crossing.

This is the part of this that galls me the most. Weaponizing UI design as a substitute for UX simplicity, and using that weaponized design to bluster past the UX shortcomings of your service in your service's marketing.

TeMPOraL9• 6 years ago

"Weaponizing UI design" is a perfect description. These designs aren't meant to be thought about, they're meant to push emotional buttons in your head. They're meant to make you feel safe, make you shut down critical thinking, in order to make you more receptive to the marketing message.

webwielder2• 6 years ago

By “product design” do they mean “visual design of marketing sites”?

Anyway, trends come and go. I don’t think there’s any meaning to be derived here beyond “attractive marketing collateral is appealing.”

aj7• 6 years ago

I actually actively ignore this kind of marketing aesthetic. It screams lightweight, throwaway, fake. I’m probably wrong sometimes.

slx26• 6 years ago

everything is kawaii until you actually start using the products ^^

sbruno• 6 years ago

The author uses what look like Dribbble screenshots to prove his point. Dribbble does not represent the majority state of product designs.

karaterobot• 6 years ago

This is an important point! Dribbble shots are usually not from actual products, so you can't use them as evidence for a real world trend.

Another point is that you should not generalize about the design of a product based on marketing pages. Often, the design for these pages is contracted out to studios who don't touch the rest of the product. How often do the products look and feel like the home page? Almost never.

Maybe this is a trivial point, but what I mean is: he shouldn't state this as if it were a product design trend, when (if it is a trend at all) it's a marketing trend.

motohagiography• 6 years ago

The cute'ification of design is definitely a thing. When you think about what something is supposed to signify, it appeals to certain aesthetic reference points. Within a particular critical framework, all design is to signal alignment to perceptions of power, and reflecting the ones from your customers minds is how a product succeeds.

Personally, I find this kind of design originates in those corporate retreat exercises where you co-operate in infantalizing play-time and people are forced to compete to demonstrate submission and remove indicators of individual quality or personality as "edges" that create friction to the dynamic flow of power. In the design language, removing edges and clear lines that might signal "either/or, black and white" thinking in the design reflects this value of passive, liquid, flexibility - which is the opposite of decisive, directed, or forceful aesthetics of 80's, 90's and 00's coroporate design languages.

Compare it to the 90s-00's Italian Futurist corporate design language of some major internet companies, which was perhaps in hindsight an unfortunate choice, and was the polar opposite of the unthreatening startup languages of today.

The values implicit in the design are fascinating to consider, but a critical view of them would take the topic into more controversial territory.

lunias2• 6 years ago

Not kawaii, but good callout nonetheless. This is just what designs end up looking like when you consider 7 billion people your target audience and want to market to them all simultaneously. It's for everyone and also for no one; it's soulless garbage.

popup21• 6 years ago

and our productivity tools are starting to look like Animal Crossing.

bada-bing!

knolax6• 6 years ago

I don't know what kind of art you guys grew up with, but when I was a kid all the art I was exposed to (in cartoons and textbooks and whatnot) used saturated colors and was shaded. This is the exact opposite of the art style I associate with "infantilization". It's abstract and flat and uses pastel colors, like something out of a mural.

annoyingnoob• 6 years ago

Cartoon humans in advertising is a big turn off for me. Are you serious or just playing around?

elischiff• 6 years ago

This talk about "kawaii" a lie meant to erase the work I did on @humansofflat until designers canceled me: https://twitter.com/HumansOfFlat

kgin2• 6 years ago

The kawaii style was a few years ago. It’s all about the blob people now.

_bxg1• 6 years ago

This is a really insightful way of framing the trend. I hadn't thought about it this way before but it makes perfect sense.

However: I think there's a more sinister aspect that's not covered in the article. Think about how dystopian so many software products are today - the privacy violations, the toxic social interactions, the dark patterns. It makes perfect sense that the companies behind these products would lean as hard into kawaii as they can, to mask the bad stuff and make the user more receptive. Who could be worried about the personal information they're giving away when there's a cute little cartoon animal shyly asking for it?

The Kawaiization of Product Design

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