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。