包裹黑色像素点的最小矩形
Today we’re going to talk about something you’ve probably noticed, but never put into words: convergent design. A quick google search tells me that this is a term I’ve made up, probably based on my past in the biological sciences, and probably from the real term
今天，我们要谈论的是您可能已经注意到的东西，但从来没有说过：融合设计。 谷歌快速搜索告诉我，这是我编造的一个名词，可能是基于我过去在生物科学领域的知识，可能是真实名词
convergent evolution. Convergent evolution is when living things evolve different ways to solve the same problem. For example, birds and bees both fly with wings, but 趋同进化。 趋同进化是指生物进化出解决同一问题的不同方法。 例如，鸟类和蜜蜂都与两翼齐飞，但那些 how those wings came about is very different. Octopuses and humans both have nearly identical eyes but evolved fully independently (as far as we can tell*). 怎么翅膀来到的是非常不同的。 章鱼和人类的眼睛几乎相同，但完全独立地进化(据我们所知*)。Why do I bring this up? The neat thing about evolution is that it uncaringly iterates on its solutions generation after generation, much like a designer iterates on their products, release after release.
为什么要提出这个问题？ 关于进化的整洁之处在于它毫不留情地迭代一代又一代的解决方案，就像设计师迭代他们的产品一样，一次又一次地发布。
So that made me wonder… given enough time, would all designers converge on the same “best” product in the same way nature finds a “best” solution? I started looking around and thinking, “boy, cell phones sure do look similar these days.” As do cars; engine in the front, four wheels, front-facing seats. Many, many other everyday items are like this. Spatulas for example- have we really already found the ideal tool for flipping pancakes, within only a few hundred years of pancake existence?**
因此，这使我感到奇怪……如果有足够的时间，所有设计人员是否会以自然界找到“最佳”解决方案的方式，将相同的“最佳”产品融合在一起？ 我开始环顾四周，然后想：“男孩，这些日子手机肯定看起来很相似。” 汽车也一样； 前排发动机，四个车轮，前排座椅。 许多其他日常用品都像这样。 例如，铲子-在煎饼存在的仅仅几百年之内，我们是否真的已经找到了翻转煎饼的理想工具？**
Am I on to something in thinking that there may be a “perfect” solution for every design problem? Either we’ve already solved many design problems perfectly, or we have a lot of lazy designers copying mediocre solutions.
我是否正在考虑针对每个设计问题都可能有“完美”的解决方案？ 要么我们已经完美地解决了许多设计问题，要么我们有很多懒惰的设计师抄袭平庸的解决方案。
轴和小齿轮的简史 (A Brief History of Axles and Pinions)
Cell phones are a good example of convergent design, but they haven’t been around long enough to examine closely. If you’ll recall, the modern smartphone has only been mainstream for about 13 years. Instead, let’s dig into cars — most people have driven one, everyone’s been in one. Every car you’ve been in probably had a steering wheel. Every car does. Even car-ish vehicles like tractors and go-carts have them. But why? Is a wheel the ideal control system for a car? Were we really able to figure it out early on in automotive development?
手机是融合设计的一个很好的例子，但是它们还没有足够长的时间来仔细研究。 您可能还记得，现代智能手机仅在13年左右就已成为主流。 取而代之的是，让我们研究一下汽车-大多数人都驾驶一辆，每个人都坐在一辆。 您去过的每辆车都可能有方向盘。 每辆车都可以。 甚至像拖拉机和手推车这样的汽车类车辆也有它们。 但为什么？ 车轮是汽车的理想控制系统吗？ 我们真的能够在汽车开发的早期阶段就弄清楚吗？
As a control system, we’re talking about a circle that you spin in the direction you want to go. That’s nuts. Rotating a wheel to determine the direction of travel? The steering wheel isn’t even on the same axis as the car wheels. You might be thinking “Steve, it probably was just the easiest way to connect a control to the turning axle of the cars”, but that’s wrong. The first (and probably simplest) system for controlling cars was a tiller, similar to how you’d control the rudder on a boat. Furthermore, if the use of a steering wheel was purely for technical simplicity, why wouldn’t we have updated with our modern technology by now?
作为控制系统，我们正在谈论的是您沿想要旋转的方向旋转的圆。 真是的 旋转车轮以确定行进方向？ 方向盘甚至与车轮不在同一轴线上。 您可能会想“史蒂夫，这可能是将控件连接到汽车转轴的最简单方法”，但这是错误的。 用于控制汽车的第一个(也是最简单的)控制系统是操纵杆，类似于您在船上控制舵的方式。 此外，如果纯粹是为了简化技术而使用方向盘，为什么现在不更新现代技术呢？
1904 Cyklonette with tiller steering.
1904年，带有分er操纵装置的Cyklonette。
This article isn’t about car design, so I’ll skip the history lesson. Steering wheels were inspired by ship wheels, which is why they rotate left and right. They were invented in 1894 by French engineer Alfred Vacheron, and they were replacing tillers by the start of the 20th century. Steering wheels offer more control, and the best design won out. Nowadays it’s still the best design, but for other reasons. The ability to make subtle adjustments makes it ideal for driving at high speeds, and it’s a great shape to hold an airbag in the middle.
本文与汽车设计无关，因此我将跳过历史课程。 方向盘的灵感来自船轮，这就是为什么它们左右旋转。 它们是1894年由法国工程师Alfred Vacheron发明的，并在20世纪初取代了耕种机。 方向盘提供了更多的控制，并且赢得了最佳设计。 如今，它仍然是最好的设计，但是还有其他原因。 进行微调的能力使其成为高速行驶的理想选择，并且将安全气囊固定在中间非常好。
Steering wheels seem like a pretty good argument for convergent design. But are design solutions always this obvious? Is there an opposite case, where there’s no single “ideal” design? What problems have resulted in radically different solutions that have totally diverged from each other?
方向盘似乎是融合设计的一个很好的论据。 但是设计解决方案总是如此明显吗？ 是否有相反的情况，没有单一的“理想”设计？ 哪些问题导致了完全不同的根本不同的解决方案？
发散设计 (Divergent Design)
Take chairs for example, most people have sat on one at some point. There’s nearly every type of chair you can imagine; stools, recliners, couches. But are these examples of true divergence? I’d say each one is the perfect solution to a different category of seated needs- compact, for relaxing, or for multi-person seating respectively.
以椅子为例，大多数人在某个时候坐在椅子上。 您几乎可以想象到每种椅子； 凳子，躺椅，沙发。 但是这些真实分歧的例子吗？ 我想说的是，每种座椅都是满足不同类别就座需求的完美解决方案，分别是紧凑型，休闲型或多人座椅。
It’s hard to find examples of designs that wildly diverge from each other because when a product works, it tends to get imitated by competitors. We have Apple to thank for all phones converging on a black rectangular form. Their original iPhone defined the smartphone genre and still does. A large rectangular screen with minimal buttonry is the best solution to the problem, for now. Competitors who bring a less good solution to the market (looking at you, Microsoft Zune) get forgotten. In nature when evolution fails, the animal dies and doesn’t make it into the fossil record.
很难找到彼此大相径庭的设计实例，因为当一种产品起作用时，它往往会被竞争对手模仿。 我们要感谢苹果公司所有以黑色矩形形式汇聚的手机。 他们最初的iPhone定义了智能手机类型，现在仍然如此。 目前，最大的矩形屏幕和最小的纽扣是解决该问题的最佳方法。 将不太好的解决方案推向市场(在您看来，Microsoft Zune)的竞争对手会被遗忘。 在自然界中，当进化失败时，该动物死亡并且不会进入化石记录。
The original black rectangle.***
原始的黑色矩形。***
The easiest way to see divergent design is in modern emerging industries, such as the future of retail. Some stores have adopted self-checkouts, others have shopping carts that ring up items as you shop. Amazon has its camera-based solution. These are all pretty divergent. Which is the best? We’ll probably find out in a few years when it starts showing up everywhere.
看到差异化设计的最简单方法是在现代新兴行业中，例如零售业的未来。 一些商店采用了自助结帐，另一些商店则使用购物车在您购物时敲响商品。 亚马逊有其基于摄像头的解决方案。 这些都分歧很大。 哪个最好？ 我们可能会在几年后开始发现它出现在所有地方。
Space tourism, virtual reality devices, drones, and smart city technology are all industries that have divergent products trying to accomplish roughly the same thing.
太空旅游，虚拟现实设备，无人机和智慧城市技术都是具有不同产品的行业，这些产品试图完成大致相同的任务。
I get to see a lot of start-ups in my work, and they often have new products that solve a need not currently met. If those products become a commercial success, it’ll probably be copied and tweaked by others. The original product will get tweaked by the inventor. Over time, it’ll change, but it won’t change that much. Just like designers iterating, and nature evolving, products make incremental changes. The steering wheel changes, but it doesn’t stop being a steering wheel. Successful products change, but they don’t diverge.
我在自己的工作中看到很多初创企业，而且他们经常有可以解决当前未满足需求的新产品。 如果这些产品在商业上取得成功，则可能会被其他人复制和调整。 原始产品将由发明人进行调整。 随着时间的流逝，它会改变，但是不会改变太多 。 就像设计师不断迭代，自然进化一样，产品也会进行增量更改。 方向盘会发生变化，但它不会停止成为方向盘。 成功的产品会发生变化，但它们不会分歧。
This explains why we only have one system for controlling cars. It’s much easier and safer to tweak something successful than to try and jump to the next major success. Evolutionary design is much faster and easier than revolutionary design. In terms of the most money for the least effort, it’s better to copy and tweak.
这解释了为什么我们只有一个控制汽车的系统。 调整成功的事物比尝试获得下一个重大成功要容易和安全得多。 革命性设计比革命性设计更快，更容易。 就省力省钱而言，最好进行复制和调整。
趋同结论 (Convergent Conclusions)
So, given enough time, would design always converge on the same solutions? Absolutely not. Two reasons:
因此，如果有足够的时间，设计是否将始终收敛于相同的解决方案？ 绝对不。 两个原因：
1. Design problems don’t like to stay solved.
1.设计问题不希望解决。
Design problems change over time, and new needs are realized. The needs of the steering wheel were changed when airbags were invented, so they were tweaked to fit one in the middle. Old needs that were originally glossed over (frequently the case with accessibility) are considered. If you’re redesigning a webpage that was built before modern accessibility guidelines were published, you’ll have to take that into consideration.
设计问题随时间而变化，并实现了新的需求。 发明安全气囊后，方向盘的需求发生了变化，因此对它们进行了调整以适合中间一个。 考虑了最初被掩盖的旧需求(通常具有可访问性的情况)。 如果要重新设计在发布现代无障碍指南之前构建的网页，则必须考虑到这一点。
2. Designers are lazy.
2.设计师是懒惰的。
Designers and inventors build off of each other’s work, are influenced by their culture and current events, and enabled by technological innovations. Good designs are picked up, spread around, iterated and improved- often without changing anything major. People, and the societies that use the products, are always changing. Reinventing a product is hard, and has a much lower rate of success. Finally, estimating the “similarity” of two different products isn’t exactly scientific. An app develop might see android and iOS as radically different, but a layperson would just see them as mobile operating systems.
设计师和发明家相互依存，受其文化和时事影响，并受到技术创新的支持。 挑选，传播，迭代和改进好的设计-通常无需更改任何主要内容。 使用产品的人和社会总是在变化。 重塑产品非常困难，并且成功率要低得多。 最后，估计两种不同产品的“相似性”并非完全科学。 应用开发人员可能会认为android和iOS根本不同，但是非专业人士只会将它们视为移动操作系统。
What’s my point then? We should always be rethinking our solutions and trying new ideas, just as crazy engineers were doing when they put a ship’s wheel into an automobile. We need to keep rethinking our solutions and avoid assuming our grandparents’ spatula is the best way to flip our modern pancakes.
那我有什么意思 我们应该一直在重新思考我们的解决方案，并尝试新的想法，就像疯狂的工程师将轮毂放入汽车中时所做的那样。 我们需要继续重新思考我们的解决方案，并避免假设祖父母的锅铲是翻转现代煎饼的最佳方法。
There will never be a single unifying theory of product design that services every need. But that’s okay.
永远不会有一个能够满足所有需求的统一产品设计理论。 但是没关系。
Because it means I’ll never be out of a job.
因为这意味着我永远不会失业。
* The comparison is actually between the phylogenetic classes of cephalopods (squid, octopus) and vertebrates (tigers, birds, humans- anything with a spinal cord). The eyes aren’t perfectly identical, cephalopods didn’t evolve a blind spot. Further reading.
*实际上是在头足类(鱿鱼，章鱼)和脊椎动物(老虎，鸟类，人类-带有脊髓的任何东西)的系统发育类别之间进行比较。 眼睛并不完全相同，头足类动物没有出现盲点。 进一步阅读。
** When I say pancakes I mean fluffy American griddle cakes. You can keep your fancy French crepes.
**当我说薄煎饼时，我指的是蓬松的美国煎饼蛋糕。 您可以保留自己喜欢的法式薄饼。
*** Original (unedited) image by user Ascola via Wikimedia. Licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0
***用户Ascola通过Wikimedia提供的原始(未经编辑)图像。 根据CC-BY-SA-2.0许可
Further Reading on Convergent Design: Why does everything look the same? By Isaac Fagerli
关于融合设计的进一步阅读： 为什么所有内容看起来都一样？ 艾萨克·法格利(Isaac Fagerli)
翻译自: https://uxdesign.cc/convergent-design-why-all-phones-are-black-rectangles-e7108dc7b50d
包裹黑色像素点的最小矩形