宅男逆袭成功: 28岁的应用设计教父

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.

目前就职于谷歌的勒卡说：“布里切特具备这样的能力，能够以一个五岁小孩的角度，用详尽的语言告诉你他觉得哪些地方不好用。”

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.

随着简约和设计在竞争异常激烈的应用程序行业变得愈加重要，布里切特的名声也与日俱增。像布里切特这样的有影响力的人物──还有前苹果公司的设计师、现在就职于脸谱公司的迈克•马塔斯(Mike Matas)以及布雷特•维克托(Bret Victor)──吸引了大批的跟风者。

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.

他们的点子经常以非正式的方式迅速传播。软件开发者没有为他们的设计申请专利和许可，而是互相征询模仿点子的许可，或者有时利用开源技术直接模仿。

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为“下拉刷新”功能提出了专利申请，预计很快就会下达的专利申请书现在归推特公司所有。但是他说有办法通过使用开源软件来创建这种功能，他早就允许任何人使用这种功能，“只要他们不犯混”。推特让其专利的发明人通过法律诉讼禁止别人使用那些专利。

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.

布里切特的设计美学受到了爱德华•塔夫特(Edward Tufte)等信息理论家的启发，塔夫特主张在图形设计里将无关的信息减少到最小程度。布里切特说他是根据人们在现实世界里移动物体的方式构思出应用程序的新功能的。

'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.'

他说：“任何事物都应该有来源有去处。”他还说自己很不喜欢那些菜单自己弹出或者收起的应用程序，因为那种互动是不真实的。“最重要的事情是要显而易见。问题出在过度设计上。”

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.

布里切特最喜欢的应用程序包括天气应用Dark Sky和日历应用Fantastical。他说自己的创意被那么多人使用让他感到意外。他说：“就是非常地简洁。”

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.

并不是所有他设计的东西都流行起来了的。在Letterpress拼字游戏中，一个将菜单从屏幕上扫出去的动作就没有流传开来，布里切特说，他怀疑是因为这个动作隐藏得太深了。

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.)

布里切特的父母分别是一名承包商和一名餐馆老板，他在2006年毕业于塔夫茨大学(Tufts University)，获得了电气工程学位。他与妻子和两条狗生活在一起，工作的地方是一间小而整洁的家庭办公室，屋里摆着一台大屏幕的Mac显示器，还挂着一张裱装好的第二版Tweetie雄踞苹果应用软件商店收入排行冠军宝座的图表，这是他父亲送给他的圣诞礼物。（这款售价2.99美元的应用程序2009年荣登这一宝座，每天揽金五万美元。）

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.

布里切特还总是逃避开会和社交聚会，他更喜欢用推特和电子邮件与人交流。他个子不高，身材适中，待人谦和又不失自信。他给人的反馈和交流意见都是直言不讳的，但有时候他会在电子邮件里发一张笑脸来缓和气氛。

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.

在距离硅谷(Silicon Valley)2,500多英里的费城，一名在蓬勃的应用程序大潮中引领潮头的男子坐在一间小小的家庭办公室里，办公桌下安放着一个狗窝。

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.

洛伦•布里切特(Loren Brichter)并不是一个家喻户晓的名字，他开发的移动应用程序也同样并非人尽皆知。这些应用程序包括一个名为Tweetie的推特(Twitter)客户端和一款与Boggle游戏很像、名为Letterpress的拼字游戏。

But to developers, the 28-year-old is a high priest of app design and an increasingly influential tastemaker.

但是对于应用程序开发者来说，这位28岁的年轻人是应用程序设计领域的教父级人物，在引领潮流方面越来越具有影响力。

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.

布里切特首创了很多应用程序特色功能并让其流行起来，比如在触摸屏上下拉刷新页面、屏幕侧边滑出面板、通过滑动动作调出隐藏按钮列表的“cell swipe”手势。

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).

这些动作现在在很多流行应用里都是标准特性，成了数以百万计的人每天都要做的常规动作。布里切特2009年创制的“下拉刷新”功能现在已经被运用到了一些软件之中，比如资源共享网站Pinterest Inc.制作的一个应用程序以及苹果公司(Apple Inc.)的邮件应用程序。

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公司和脸谱公司(Facebook Inc.)也使用了布里切特滑动面板功能的变化形式，他2010年在推特公司工作期间将该功能加入了他开发的用于iPad的推特应用程序。这项功能也被Research In Motion Ltd.应用到新的黑莓(BlackBerry)操作系统上。像Square Inc.开发的应用程序已经将滑动显示按钮的功能进行了扩展，增加了滑动支付等功能。

'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.

参与设计了任务管理应用Clear的程序开发者Phill Ryu说：“三言两语很难说清他的创意对这个领域的影响。”Clear使用了“下拉刷新”功能的变化形式，下载量已经超过80万次。

Part of Mr. Brichter's appeal to developers is his accessibility.

布里切特吸引程序开发者的部分原因是他很容易亲近。

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)想要征询别人对他的Sparrow邮件移动应用程序的反馈意见，他找到了布里切特。布里切特提出了很多的建议，包括调整Sparrow文本位置、“延长动画淡出时间一秒左右”。勒卡说他听从了大部分的建议并邀请布里切特当他的顾问；Sparrow后来广受好评，去年被谷歌公司(Google Inc.)收购。

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.]

布里切特是在苹果公司开始自己在移动行业的发展的──2006到2007年期间，他是苹果公司研发新奇技术的五人小组的成员，当时研发的技术是让iPhone的图形硬件和软件得以匹配。他后来离职自己做项目，搬到了费城去住，这样离家更近一些。[他还没有为谷歌的安卓(Android)操作系统发布应用程序，因为他认为其软硬件都不及苹果的好。]

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，布里切特开发出了Tweetie这个可以更好地使用推特的方式，最终在该应用里加入了“下拉刷新”的功能。2010年在以他自己所说的“几百万”的价格把这个应用程序卖给推特之后，他继续留在推特大约一年半时间，为该公司远程研发应用程序。他后来离开推特继续自己的尝试。

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.

布里切特最新的应用程序是拼字游戏Letterpress，这款游戏去年年底通过他的公司Atebits LLC发布。Letterpress是免费的，但是用户如果要一次玩两局以上的游戏就需要支付1.99美元。布里切特说这款游戏的下载次数已经达到了几百万。

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.

他开发Letterpress还有一个新意图：打造独立于其它公司的软件。他说：“我想把对外部事物的依赖减小到最低程度。”他补充道，他研发了自己的图形技术而不是使用苹果的技术。他还说自己下一步要开发一款电脑游戏，那将要求他自主研发更多的基础技术。

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.

布里切特的名声现在甚至已经扩散到了青少年软件开发者中。16岁的瑞安•奥巴克(Ryan Orbuch)最近在推特上给布里切特发信息，征求布里切特对他的待办事项列表应用Finish的建议。

'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.'

奥巴克说：“他绝对是个行家。”他正在消化吸收布里切特的反馈意见，其中包括“看不见冒号”以及修正那些“在翻转动画结束时会偏移一个像素”的按钮。