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.
文明的历史,从某些角度来看 也是地图的历史: 我们是如何理解周围的世界的呢? 有一幅世界著名的地图, 它管用的原因是它根本不是地图。
[Small thing. Big idea.]
[细微处的智慧]
[Michael Bierut on the London Tube Map]
[迈克·布雷特之伦敦地铁图 ]
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.
在1908年,八条相互独立的 伦敦地铁线路合并在了一起, 组成了一个单一地铁系统。 为了方便人们的出行, 地铁部门需要一幅地图 来描绘整个系统。 但他们制作的地图十分复杂。 你可以在上面看到河流、 水体、树木甚至公园—— 地铁站点却全部挤在地图中央, 边缘之外甚至还有一些无法绘入。 尽管从地理角度来说,这份地图 十分精确,但并不那么实用。
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.
直到哈利·贝克的介入。 哈利·贝克是个29岁的工程绘图员, 他一直在为伦敦地铁系统工作。 他对此有自己独特的看法, 那就是人们都是来坐地铁的, 其实并不关心地上的情况。 他们只想从一个站点去另一个站点—— “我应该从哪里上?又该从哪里下?” 所以重要的是地铁系统, 而非地理情况。 他接手了那乱的像意大利面的地图, 然后把它简化了。 地图上的线路排布只有三个方向: 平行、垂直,或者呈四十五度角。 同理,他把站点也等距绘制, 并且把站点的颜色 改成该线路的颜色, 经过这些修改,其实它就不再是 一份真正意义上的地图了。 它变成了一幅图表, 就像电路图, 只不过这幅电路图的线路 不是传输电子的电线, 而是容纳了载客地铁的管道。
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.
在1933年,地铁部门最终决定 试用哈利·贝克的地图, 地铁部门用几千份 口袋大小的地图做测试。 结果在一小时内就被人们拿光。 他们意识到了人们的需求, 于是又印刷了75万份。 这就是今天我们见到的地铁图。
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.
贝克的设计为我们如今 广泛认可的地铁图提供了模板。 东京、巴黎、柏林、圣保罗、 悉尼、华盛顿特区等等—— 这些城市都把复杂的地形图 转变成了清晰简明的几何图。 他们都用不同的颜色 来区分不同线路, 也都用简单符号 来区分不同的站点类型。 这些地图看上去 分享了一种通用的语言。
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.
我敢打赌哈利·贝克当时 还不知道用户界面是什么。 但那确实是他所设计的东西, 同时他也把这个难题 细分为了三项原则, 我觉得几乎适用于任何设计难题。 第一,有针对性。 要针对你所做设计的受众。 第二, 要简洁。 找出能满足需要的最直接的方式。 最后,第三条: 从多方面去思考一个问题。 没有谁会想到,世界上 最复杂的系统之一所面临的 难题的解决方案, 竟然出自一个电子工程师之手—— 这些都开始于一个人, 一支笔,和灵光一现。