Universal design, a term coined by Ron Mace, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, has been embraced by many Japanese companies. To see how awareness of it is spreading throughout Japan, this survey from MyVoice investigated what people thought of Universal Design, or UD as it is often abbreviated to.
Demographics
Over the first five days of August 2008 15,045 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed a members-only online questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% in their fifties.
In Q4, the lack of awareness of UD when selecting products is not necessarily a bad thing, as good UD should ideally be invisible. On many Panasonic products, for instance, the on button is a large yellow one with a black legend, a colour scheme which has been shown to be the most visible to people with cataracts or other vision problems, and the largeness makes it easier to find and push. Without knowledge of UD, the average able-bodied user perhaps just thinks it’s clearly marked, without considering the accessibility issues. Read the rest of this entry »
The figure in the headline is a surprisingly high one, coming from this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into measures to prevent leaks of information.
Demographics
Over the 28th and 29th of August 2008 300 people from the Marsh monitor panel with home computers completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.0% of the sample were female, and 20.0% in each age group from the twenties to the over-sixties.
The difference in Q1 between online shopping and online checkout is that many services offer not just online payment, but also offline payment at convenience store kiosks, and even cash on delivery to said convenience stores.
For Q2SQ, my wife had that, filling in a dodgy survey from a site linked from a popular trustworthy site, and she gets about 10 spam per day from them. Read the rest of this entry »
This week’s Silly Sunday looks at love in Japanese high schools, in particular people’s personal memories from there, for both men and women.
Demographics
Between the 11th and 15th of July 2008 1,064 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 55.9% of the sample were female, 10.3% in their teens and 89.7% in their twenties. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample. Read the rest of this entry »
In yesterday’s post I pondered out loud about whether or not the line I commute on is the busiest one in the Osaka area or not, so I decided to look for some statistics. With surprisingly little effort, I found the data for last year, 2007, for Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya areas.
The degree of crowding was averaged over one hour over all the trains passing through the segment between two stations, and I presume also averaged over the year. As a baseline, 100% is full, not just all seats taken, but also the straps and a few people around the doors. 150% is touching shoulders, but can still easily read a newspaper. 180% is bodies touching, but can just manage to read. 200% is just a bit too close, but you can still just manage a magazine or book. 250% is sardines.
This survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com looking into issues surrounding Google Maps Street View.
Demographics
On the 20th of August 2008 332 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor panel employed in either the public or private sectors completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.7% of the sample were male, 6.3% in their twenties, 35.8% in their thirties, 45.2% in their forties, and 12.7% in their fifties.
The Google camera car didn’t make a trip up my street, despite being right beside a railway station on the most overcrowded (or so I heard, I should search for figures!) line in the Kansai area. When I used my old computer with Street View it was horribly slow, although I did manage to find my previous flat. I had a look around the area but didn’t find anyone I knew, however. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the first five days of August 2008 14,782 members of the MyVoice internet community successfully completed an internet-based private questionnaire. 54% of the sample were female, 1% were in their teens, 15% in their twenties, 37% in their thirties, 29% in their forties, and 18% in their fifties.
The Prius is a lovely car which I always try to rent when I need a car in Japan. I always use Toyota Rent-A-Car. If you pay using a (Japanese only?) credit card you get a 5% discount. The cars are fully-equipped with a CD player, good satellite navigation system (Japanese only!) and ETC automatic toll payment machine, if you have a card for that. I’m picking up one the weekend after next, and it works out at about 8,000 yen per day.
It’s now 19 months since Windows Vista appeared on the Japanese market (last January), so this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into computer operating systems looked at how it was penetrating the market.
Demographics
Between the 21st and 25th of August 2008 300 home computer-owning members of Marsh monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. The sexes were split 50:50, 20.0% of the sample were in their twenties, 20.0% in their thirties, 20.0% in their forties, 20.0% in their fifties, and 20.0% aged sixty or older.
I’ve recently upgraded to Vista as it came with my new machine. I’d put myself in the moderately satisfied category, but I’m still trying to get it set up just as I desire, and the photo management software and nengajo (New Year postcard) management software that I specially bought as a set had a “Windows Vista compatible” sticket, but I find that really means “not incompatible with Vista” as it requires full permissions in order to run. Read the rest of this entry »
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea was the sweetest film I’ve seen since My Neighbour Totoro, and over 8 million Japanese seem to agree with that sentiment. The official Ponyo site itself has racked up just under a million visitors, 995,000 to be precise, (low in my view) from home computers in July, the highest ever figures for the film maker Ghibli’s properties, with the main ages of the visitors being 34% in their thirties and 29% in their forties. By sex, 57% were female. Previous records were 701,000 in November of 2004 for Howl’s Moving Castle, and 444,000 in July of 2006 for Tales of Earthsea.
For all of the Ghibili sites visitors jumped from 114,000 in June to 1,123,000 in July.
For box office sales, number one for the first half of the year was 相棒, aibou, with 311,000 predominantly male viewers in May alone, with over half of the total being over forty years old. In July, the top movie was Hana Yori Dango (Boys before Flowers) with 576,000 ticket sales, 85% of them to females, and 38% of the viewers 19 years old or younger.
There was a short report on IT Media about a new female-oriented site that is threatening to break into the big time. This under-the-radar idiom is お化けサイト, obake saito, or ghost/monster site. At least I hope that’s what the meaning is!
The site is entitled 発言小町, hatsugen komachi, or in English Talk Town might be a reasonable translation, a sub-site on the Yomiuri Shimbun’s site. Although the monthly unique visitors from home computers are a factor of ten to twenty behind the big boys, the average time spent per unique visitor is far ahead of the competition, as this chart shows.
Site Name
Monthly uniques
Monthly usage (h:mm:ss)
Site genre
Hatsugen Komachi
670,000
1:21:50
Bulletin board
YouTube
18,320,000
1:17:38
Video viewing
2 channel
9,400,000
0:56:19
Bulletin board
Yahoo! Chiebukuro
13,230,000
0:13:03
Q&A site
Oshiete! goo
6,420,000
0:05:08
Q&A site
One important issue when comparing sites is that the user profile is older and female-biased, as the following tables show.
Site name
Male
Female
Hatsugen Komachi
46
54
YouTube
58
42
2 channel
60
40
Yahoo! Chiebukuro
54
46
Oshiete! goo
54
46
Site name
Teenagers
20-29 years old
30-39 years old
40-49 years old
50 years old and over
Hatsugen Komachi
7%
10%
36%
30%
17%
YouTube
27%
12%
21%
25%
16%
2 channel
16%
11%
28%
29%
16%
Yahoo! Chiebukuro
16%
12%
27%
27%
18%
Oshiete! goo
12%
13%
29%
28%
19%
Looking at other articles, two of the main selling points of the site to the female population are that all posts are moderated before posting and that the a lot of the highlighted content on the front page reads like the problem page of a woman’s magazine.
We’re now two months into the iPhone era in Japan, so this 39th regular mobile upgrade needs survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com took a closer look at some of the issues surrounding this device.
Demographics
Between the 18th and 21st of August 2008 1,000 mobile phone-using members of the goo Research online monitor pool completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.2% of the sample were female, 2.0% were in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 40.8% in their thirties, 24.6% in their forties, and 14.3% aged fifty or older.
Note that for Q1 and Q2, for people with multiple providers or multiple phones, they answered for their main one only.
Apple on 0.3% for this survey is a difficult number to interpret. If you take the aproximate figure of 100 million mobile phones in Japan, this represents about 300,000 users, but figures suggest there has been about 100,000 iPhones sold in Japan. The age group of respondents is biased toward the iPhone demographic, and almost all of them own home computers, so it would suggest a bias, but how much is difficult to predict.
Q4 is a difficult one to interpret. Just over half of those surveyed do not welcome some of the phones; in English being not welcome has negative connotations, but it may be more correct to say that people are just not bothered. Read the rest of this entry »
Universal design, a term coined by Ron Mace, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, has been embraced by many Japanese companies. To see how awareness of it is spreading throughout Japan, this survey from MyVoice investigated what people thought of Universal Design, or UD as it is often abbreviated to.
The figure in the headline is a surprisingly high one, coming from this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into 
This survey from JR Tokai Express Research Inc and reported on by japan.internet.com looking into issues surrounding 
With other surveys showing that 
It’s now 19 months since Windows Vista appeared on the Japanese market (last January), so this survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by Marsh Inc into 
We’re now two months into the iPhone era in Japan, so this 
Subscribe to feed