The history of civilization, in some ways, is a history of maps: How have we come to understand the world around us? One of the most famous maps works because it really isn't a map at all.
Povijest civilizacije je, na neki način, povijest karata. Kako smo shvatili svijet oko nas? Jedna od najpoznatijih karti funkcionira jer zapravo uopće ni nije karta.
[Small thing. Big idea.]
(Mala stvar. Velika ideja.)
[Michael Bierut on the London Tube Map]
[Michael Bierut o karti podzemne željeznice Londona]
The London Underground came together in 1908, when eight different independent railways merged to create a single system. They needed a map to represent that system so people would know where to ride. The map they made is complicated. You can see rivers, bodies of water, trees and parks -- the stations were all crammed together at the center of the map, and out in the periphery, there were some that couldn't even fit on the map. So the map was geographically accurate, but maybe not so useful.
Londonski metro nastao je 1908., kad se osam različitih neovisnih željeznica spojilo za stvaranje jedinstvenog sustava. Trebali su kartu za predstavljanje tog sustava da bi ljudi znali kamo se voziti. Kartu koju su napravili je komplicirana. Možete vidjeti rijeke, vodene površine, drveća i parkove -- stanice su bile nagurane jedna do druge u središtu karte, a na periferiji bilo je nekih koje nisu ni mogle stati na kartu. Dakle, karta je bila geografski točna, ali možda ne tako korisna.
Enter Harry Beck. Harry Beck was a 29-year-old engineering draftsman who had been working on and off for the London Underground. And he had a key insight, and that was that people riding underground in trains don't really care what's happening aboveground. They just want to get from station to station -- "Where do I get on? Where do I get off?" It's the system that's important, not the geography. He's taken this complicated mess of spaghetti, and he's simplified it. The lines only go in three directions: they're horizontal, they're vertical, or they're 45 degrees. Likewise, he spaced the stations equally, he's made every station color correspond to the color of the line, and he's fixed it all so that it's not really a map anymore. What it is is a diagram, just like circuitry, except the circuitry here isn't wires conducting electrons, it's tubes containing trains conducting people from place to place.
Tu nastupa Harry Beck. Harry Beck bio je 29-godišnji inženjerski crtač koji je povremeno radio za Londonski Metro. I imao je ključni uvid, a to je da ljude koji se voze podzemnom željeznicom baš ne zanima što se događa iznad zemlje. Samo žele doći od stanice do stanice -- "Gdje ulazim? Gdje izlazim? Sustav je taj koji je važan, ne zemljopis. Uzeo je taj komplicirani nered od špageta i pojednostavio ga. Linije idu u samo tri smjera: vodoravne su, okomite su ili pod kutom od 45 stupnjeva. Također, stanice je ravnomjerno rasporedio, napravio je da svaka boja stanice odgovara boji linije, i popravio je sve tako da to uopće više nije karta. Ono što to jest je dijagram, kao sklopovi, osim što sklopovi ovdje nisu žice koje provode elektrone, to su cijevi koje sadrže vlakove, koji provode ljude od mjesta do mjesta.
In 1933, the Underground decided, at last, to give Harry Beck's map a try. The Underground did a test run of a thousand of these maps, pocket-size. They were gone in one hour. They realized they were onto something, they printed 750,000 more, and this is the map that you see today.
Godine 1933. Podzemna je odlučila, napokon, isprobati kartu Harrya Becka. Podzemna je napravila testiranje s tisuću ovih karata, džepne veličine. Razgrabljene su u sat vremena. Shvatili su da su na tragu nečemu, otisnuli su još 750 000 primjeraka i to je karta koju vidite danas.
Beck's design really became the template for the way we think of metro maps today. Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, São Paulo, Sydney, Washington, D.C. -- all of them convert complex geography into crisp geometry. All of them use different colors to distinguish between lines, all of them use simple symbols to distinguish between types of stations. They all are part of a universal language, seemingly.
Beckov je dizajn stvarno postao predložak za način na koji danas vidimo karte metroa. Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, São Paulo, Sydney, Washington D.C. -- svi pretvaraju složen zemljopis u jednostavnu geometriju. Svi oni koriste različite boje da bi razlikovali linije, svi oni koriste jednostavne simbole da bi razlikovali vrste stanica. Svi su oni dio univerzalnog jezika, očito.
I bet Harry Beck wouldn't have known what a user interface was, but that's really what he designed and he really took that challenge and broke it down to three principles that I think can be applied in nearly any design problem. First one is focus. Focus on who you're doing this for. The second principle is simplicity. What's the shortest way to deliver that need? Finally, the last thing is: Thinking in a cross-disciplinary way. Who would've thought that an electrical engineer would be the person to hold the key to unlock what was then one of the most complicated systems in the world -- all started by one guy with a pencil and an idea.
Kladim se da Harry Beck ne bi znao što je korisničko sučelje, ali to je zapravo ono što je on dizajnirao i stvarno je prihvatio taj izazov i razradio ga na tri načela za koje mislim da se mogu primijeniti u skoro svakom problemu s dizajnom. Prvi je fokus. Fokus na onog zbog koga to radite. Drugo načelo je jednostavnost. Koji je najkraći put da se ispuni ta potreba? I na kraju, posljednja stvar je: Razmišljanje na interdisciplinarni način. Tko bi pomislio da će inženjer elektrotehnike biti osoba koja će držati ključ za otključavanje onoga što je tada bio jedan od najkompliciranijih sustava na svijetu --