宅男逆襲成功: 28歲的應用設計教父大綱

Mr. Brichter 'has this ability to put himself in the shoes of a five-year-old who tells you in an elaborate language what he's having a hard time doing,' says Mr. Leca, who now works at Google.

目前就職於谷歌的勒卡說：“布里切特具備這樣的能力，能夠以一個五歲小孩的角度，用詳盡的語言告訴你他覺得哪些地方不好用。”

Mr. Brichter's reputation is growing as simplicity and design become more important in the highly competitive apps business. Influencers like Mr. Brichter--as well as former Apple designers Mike Matas, who is now at Facebook, and Bret Victor--thus draw big followings.

隨着簡約和設計在競爭異常激烈的應用程序行業變得愈加重要，布里切特的名聲也與日俱增。像布里切特這樣的有影響力的人物──還有前蘋果公司的設計師、現在就職於臉譜公司的邁克•馬塔斯(Mike Matas)以及佈雷特•維克托(Bret Victor)──吸引了大批的跟風者。

Their ideas often spread informally and rapidly. Rather than patenting and licensing their designs, developers ask each other permission to mimic an idea or do so on their own, sometimes using open-source technology.

他們的點子經常以非正式的方式迅速傳播。軟件開發者沒有爲他們的設計申請專利和許可，而是互相徵詢模仿點子的許可，或者有時利用開源技術直接模仿。

Mr. Brichter filed to patent the 'pull-to refresh' feature before joining Twitter, and the patent application, expected to be issued soon, is now owned by Twitter. But he says there are ways to build this feature using open-source software, and he has long given anyone permission to use it 'as long as they aren't a d---.' Twitter lets the inventors of its patents veto using them in offensive lawsuits.

布里切特在加盟推特公司之前爲“下拉刷新”功能提出了專利申請，預計很快就會下達的專利申請書現在歸推特公司所有。但是他說有辦法通過使用開源軟件來創建這種功能，他早就允許任何人使用這種功能，“只要他們不犯混”。推特讓其專利的發明人通過法律訴訟禁止別人使用那些專利。

Mr. Brichter, whose design aesthetic is inspired by information theorists like Edward Tufte, a proponent of minimizing extraneous information in graphic designs, says he thinks up new features for apps based on how people move objects in the real world.

布里切特的設計美學受到了愛德華•塔夫特(Edward Tufte)等信息理論家的啓發，塔夫特主張在圖形設計裏將無關的信息減少到最小程度。布里切特說他是根據人們在現實世界裏移動物體的方式構思出應用程序的新功能的。

'Everything should come from somewhere and go somewhere,' he says, adding that he's irked by apps that have menus that pop up or collapse on themselves because the interactions aren't real. 'The most important thing is obviousness. The problem is overdesign.'

他說：“任何事物都應該有來源有去處。”他還說自己很不喜歡那些菜單自己彈出或者收起的應用程序，因爲那種互動是不真實的。“最重要的事情是要顯而易見。問題出在過度設計上。”

Mr. Brichter, whose favorite apps include the weather app Dark Sky and calendar app Fantastical, says he has been surprised by how much his work has been picked up. 'It is more neat than anything,' he says.

布里切特最喜歡的應用程序包括天氣應用Dark Sky和日曆應用Fantastical。他說自己的創意被那麼多人使用讓他感到意外。他說：“就是非常地簡潔。”

Not everything he does has caught on. A gesture for wiping a menu off a screen in Letterpress hasn't gone anywhere, says Mr. Brichter, because he suspects it is buried in the app.

並不是所有他設計的東西都流行起來了的。在Letterpress拼字遊戲中，一個將菜單從屏幕上掃出去的動作就沒有流傳開來，布里切特說，他懷疑是因爲這個動作隱藏得太深了。

The son of a contractor and a restaurant owner, Mr. Brichter graduated from Tufts University with a degree in electrical engineering in 2006. He lives with his wife and two dogs, working from a small, tidy home office with a large Mac monitor and a framed chart of Tweetie's second version topping the app store revenue chart, a Christmas gift from his father. (The $2.99 app achieved the status in 2009 while making about $50,000 a day.)

布里切特的父母分別是一名承包商和一名餐館老闆，他在2006年畢業於塔夫茨大學(Tufts University)，獲得了電氣工程學位。他與妻子和兩條狗生活在一起，工作的地方是一間小而整潔的家庭辦公室，屋裏擺着一臺大屏幕的Mac顯示器，還掛着一張裱裝好的第二版Tweetie雄踞蘋果應用軟件商店收入排行冠軍寶座的圖表，這是他父親送給他的聖誕禮物。（這款售價2.99美元的應用程序2009年榮登這一寶座，每天攬金五萬美元。）

Mr. Brichter also eschews conferences and networking gatherings, preferring Twitter and email. Short and fit, he is unassuming yet confident. His feedback and communication is direct, but sometimes tempered in email with a smiley face.

布里切特還總是逃避開會和社交聚會，他更喜歡用推特和電子郵件與人交流。他個子不高，身材適中，待人謙和又不失自信。他給人的反饋和交流意見都是直言不諱的，但有時候他會在電子郵件裏發一張笑臉來緩和氣氛。

More than 2,500 miles from Silicon Valley, in a small home office with a dog bed under the desk, sits a man on the cutting edge of the apps boom.
在距離硅谷(Silicon Valley)2,500多英里的費城，一名在蓬勃的應用程序大潮中引領潮頭的男子坐在一間小小的家庭辦公室裏，辦公桌下安放着一個狗窩。
Loren Brichter isn't a household name. Nor are the mobile applications he has built, which include a Twitter client called Tweetie and a Boggle-like word game called Letterpress.
洛倫•布里切特(Loren Brichter)並不是一個家喻戶曉的名字，他開發的移動應用程序也同樣並非人盡皆知。這些應用程序包括一個名爲Tweetie的推特(Twitter)客戶端和一款與Boggle遊戲很像、名爲Letterpress的拼字遊戲。
But to developers, the 28-year-old is a high priest of app design and an increasingly influential tastemaker.
但是對於應用程序開發者來說，這位28歲的年輕人是應用程序設計領域的教父級人物，在引領潮流方面越來越具有影響力。
Mr. Brichter was the first developer to create or help popularize app features such as pulling on a touch screen to refresh a page, panels that slide out from the side of a screen and the 'cell swipe,' which is swiping to uncover a list of hidden buttons.
布里切特首創了很多應用程序特色功能並讓其流行起來，比如在觸摸屏上下拉刷新頁面、屏幕側邊滑出面板、通過滑動動作調出隱藏按鈕列表的“cell swipe”手勢。
Those actions are now standard features in many popular apps, becoming part of the daily routines of millions of people. The 'pull-to-refresh' feature, which Mr. Brichter built in 2009, is woven in software such as an app made by content-sharing site Pinterest Inc. and the mail app from Apple Inc. (AAPL).
這些動作現在在很多流行應用裏都是標準特性，成了數以百萬計的人每天都要做的常規動作。布里切特2009年創制的“下拉刷新”功能現在已經被運用到了一些軟件之中，比如資源共享網站Pinterest Inc.製作的一個應用程序以及蘋果公司(Apple Inc.)的郵件應用程序。
Evernote Corp. and Facebook Inc. (FB) are also using a variant of Mr. Brichter's sliding-panel feature, which he built into in a Twitter Inc. iPad app he created during a stint at that company in 2010. The feature was also used by Research In Motion Ltd. (BBRY, BB.T) in its new BlackBerry operating system. And apps like Square Inc. have expanded on the swiping to reveal buttons with features like swiping to pay.
Evernote公司和臉譜公司(Facebook Inc.)也使用了布里切特滑動面板功能的變化形式，他2010年在推特公司工作期間將該功能加入了他開發的用於iPad的推特應用程序。這項功能也被Research In Motion Ltd.應用到新的黑莓(BlackBerry)操作系統上。像Square Inc.開發的應用程序已經將滑動顯示按鈕的功能進行了擴展，增加了滑動支付等功能。
'It's hard to understate the impact his ideas have had on the space,' says Phill Ryu, a developer who helped design the Clear task-management app, which uses variations on 'pull-to-refresh' and has been downloaded more than 800,000 times.
參與設計了任務管理應用Clear的程序開發者Phill Ryu說：“三言兩語很難說清他的創意對這個領域的影響。”Clear使用了“下拉刷新”功能的變化形式，下載量已經超過80萬次。
Part of Mr. Brichter's appeal to developers is his accessibility.
布里切特吸引程序開發者的部分原因是他很容易親近。
When Dominique Leca wanted feedback on his Sparrow mail mobile app in 2010, he sought out Mr. Brichter. Mr. Brichter responded to Mr. Leca with copious notes about the Sparrow app, including suggesting an adjustment to Sparrow's text placement and advising Mr. Leca to 'delay the fade-out animation by a second or so.' Mr. Leca says he followed much of the advice and asked Mr. Brichter to be an adviser; Sparrow later received much acclaim and was acquired by Google Inc. (GOOG) last year.
2010年，多米尼克•勒卡(Dominique Leca)想要徵詢別人對他的Sparrow郵件移動應用程序的反饋意見，他找到了布里切特。布里切特提出了很多的建議，包括調整Sparrow文本位置、“延長動畫淡出時間一秒左右”。勒卡說他聽從了大部分的建議並邀請布里切特當他的顧問；Sparrow後來廣受好評，去年被谷歌公司(Google Inc.)收購。
Mr. Brichter got his start in the mobile industry while at Apple from 2006 to 2007 as part of a five-person group working out early kinks in technology that made the iPhone's graphics hardware and software communicate. He left to work on his own projects and moved to Philadelphia to be close to his family. [He still doesn't release apps for Google's Android operating system because he thinks the hardware and software aren't as good as Apple's.]
布里切特是在蘋果公司開始自己在移動行業的發展的──2006到2007年期間，他是蘋果公司研發新奇技術的五人小組的成員，當時研發的技術是讓iPhone的圖形硬件和軟件得以匹配。他後來離職自己做項目，搬到了費城去住，這樣離家更近一些。[他還沒有爲谷歌的安卓(Android)操作系統發佈應用程序，因爲他認爲其軟硬件都不及蘋果的好。]

In 2008, Mr. Brichter built Tweetie to have a better way to use Twitter and eventually included the 'pull-to-refresh' feature. After selling the app to Twitter for what he says was 'single digit millions' in 2010, he stayed on at Twitter working remotely on the company's apps for about a year and a half. He left to keep experimenting.
2008年，布里切特開發出了Tweetie這個可以更好地使用推特的方式，最終在該應用里加入了“下拉刷新”的功能。2010年在以他自己所說的“幾百萬”的價格把這個應用程序賣給推特之後，他繼續留在推特大約一年半時間，爲該公司遠程研發應用程序。他後來離開推特繼續自己的嘗試。
Mr. Brichter's latest app is the word game Letterpress, released late last year through his company, Atebits LLC. Letterpress is free but users pay $1.99 to play more than two games at once; Mr. Brichter says it has been downloaded millions of times.
布里切特最新的應用程序是拼字遊戲Letterpress，這款遊戲去年年底通過他的公司Atebits LLC發佈。Letterpress是免費的，但是用戶如果要一次玩兩局以上的遊戲就需要支付1.99美元。布里切特說這款遊戲的下載次數已經達到了幾百萬。
He also built Letterpress with a new intent: independence from software owned by other companies. 'I want to minimize my dependency on outside stuff,' he says, adding he built his own graphics technology instead of using Apple's. He adds that he is working on an arcade game next that will also require him to build more of his own underlying technology.
他開發Letterpress還有一個新意圖：打造獨立於其它公司的軟件。他說：“我想把對外部事物的依賴減小到最低程度。”他補充道，他研發了自己的圖形技術而不是使用蘋果的技術。他還說自己下一步要開發一款電腦遊戲，那將要求他自主研發更多的基礎技術。
Mr. Brichter's reputation has now spread to even teen developers. Ryan Orbuch, 16, recently pinged Mr. Brichter over Twitter for advice on his to-do list app, Finish.
布里切特的名聲現在甚至已經擴散到了青少年軟件開發者中。16歲的瑞安•奧巴克(Ryan Orbuch)最近在推特上給布里切特發信息，徵求布里切特對他的待辦事項列表應用Finish的建議。
'He definitely knows what he is doing,' says Mr. Orbuch, who is working to incorporate Mr. Brichter's feedback, which ranged from 'lose the colons' to fixing buttons that 'shift a pixel when the flip animation finishes.'
奧巴克說：“他絕對是個行家。”他正在消化吸收布里切特的反饋意見，其中包括“看不見冒號”以及修正那些“在翻轉動畫結束時會偏移一個像素”的按鈕。