by Morten Just

由Morten Just

您的用户界面是您产品不会因心灵感应而谦卑的补偿 (Your UI is your product’s humble compensation for not being telepathic)

拿一些产品，然后继续问“这是要补偿什么？” 最终您将得到相同的答案。 这个答案可能就是为什么对话界面可能会遇到麻烦 (Take a few products and keep asking “what is this compensating for?” and you’ll eventually end up with the same answer. And that answer may be why conversational interfaces could get in trouble)

Cruz Marrero was texting. She felt a cold stone wall smash against her lower leg. The mall noises became the bubbly sounds you hear when you are snorkeling. She had fallen into the mall fountain. She was now in the mall fountain with her entire body. No one is supposed to be in the mall fountain with their entire body. A dozen people froze in their steps and stared. In the coming weeks the spectator count reached millions. Some of those may even have fallen into fountains themselves while watching the video of her doing it. Mobile phones and other screens hog the center of our attention like a cat and a red laser dot. We are clumsy zombies.

克鲁兹·马雷罗(Cruz Marrero)正在发短信。 她感到一堵冷石墙砸在她的小腿上。 浮潜时，商场的声音变成了泡沫状的声音。 她掉进了商场的喷泉。 她现在全身都在商场的喷泉里。 没有人应该整个身体都在购物中心的喷泉里。 十几个人呆在脚下凝视。 在接下来的几周内，观众的数量达到了数百万。 在观看她的录像时，其中一些甚至可能自己掉进了喷泉。 手机和其他屏幕像猫和红色激光点一样吸引了我们的注意力。 我们是笨拙的僵尸。

Cruz Marrero would not have fallen into the mall fountain had she used a better kind of thought transfer. Because that’s what a phone does. If you ask Stephen King, reading this sentence is telepathy. He moves a thought from his head into his reader’s head. We can say the same thing about design for digital products. The app moves a piece of information from its database into your head. The question is how fast.

如果克鲁斯·马雷罗(Cruz Marrero)使用更好的思想传递方式，她就不会掉进商场喷泉。 因为这就是手机的功能。 如果你问斯蒂芬·金 ，读这句话是心灵感应。 他将思想从脑海转移到读者的脑海。 我们可以对数字产品的设计说同样的话。 该应用程序将一条信息从其数据库移至您的头部。 问题是多快。

Marrero was walking in the mall while texting. Maybe she was also trying to find out when her train leaves. She could have been at the mall with her husband, talking about what to have for dinner. She was also trying not to walk in to the mall fountain. That’s a lot of things at the same time, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do them all at the same time. Not with the right degree of telepathy.

在发短信时，Marrero正在商场里散步。 也许她还试图找出火车何时发车。 她本可以和丈夫一起去商场，谈论晚餐要吃些什么。 她还试图不走进购物中心的喷泉。 这是同时做的很多事情，但这并不意味着不可能同时完成所有操作。 没有适当程度的心灵感应。

So what are they, the various degrees of telepathy, and how could they help keep Marerro dry while still finding out when the next train leaves, and settle on Chinese vs. Italian food for dinner?

那么，它们是什么，不同程度的心灵感应，它们如何才能使Marerro保持干燥，同时仍能找到下一班火车何时离开，并在晚餐时吃中餐或意大利餐？

分心的心灵感应 (Distracted telepathy)

In today’s shoddy degree of telepathy you take out your phone, unlock it, resist the temptations of checking Twitter mentions, Facebook birthdays, and work emails. You open the train app and mine out the information. More often than not, the train app will try too keep you hanging around for a while. Special offer. Rail News. Weekend getaway.

在当今低劣的心灵感应下，您需要拿出手机，解锁手机， 抵制检查Twitter提及，Facebook生日和工作电子邮件的诱惑 。 您打开火车应用程序并挖掘信息。 通常，火车应用程序会尝试使您保持一段时间的闲逛。 特价。 铁路新闻。 周末度假。

Even today, an app designer can improve their app with telepathy in two ways. First, outbound telepathy is figuring out what the user wants. Then, inbound telepathy is about shipping that information to the user’s head. Any decision a designer makes will either take the product closer to telepathy, or move away from telepathy.

即使在今天，应用程序设计师也可以通过两种方式利用心灵感应来改善其应用程序。 首先，出站心灵感应正在弄清楚用户想要什么。 然后，入站心灵感应就是将这些信息传送到用户的头部。 设计师做出的任何决定都将使产品更接近心灵感应，或者远离心灵感应。

言语心灵感应 (Verbal telepathy)

We’re moving into science fiction territory now, but as we’ll see in a moment, a gang of new products are taking the first steps. We can imagine verbal telepathy using your brain voice. The brain voice—or inner voice—is what you hear when you read text, like right now. With verbal telepathy, the inner voice would work like a keyboard—instead of typing, you “speak” silently with your inner voice. That is the outbound telepathy. The inner voice also works like a speaker. Instead of reading, you ”listen” to the inner voice. That is the inbound telepathy.

我们现在正在进入科幻小说领域，但是正如我们稍后将看到的那样，一堆新产品正在迈出第一步。 我们可以用您的大脑声音来想象言语心灵感应。 就像现在一样，当您阅读文本时，您会听到大脑的声音(或内在声音)。 使用语音感应时，内在声音将像键盘一样工作，而不是打字，而是用内在声音“静音”“说话”。 那就是外向心灵感应。 内部声音也像扬声器一样工作。 您无需阅读，而是“聆听”内在的声音。 那就是入站心灵感应。

BRAIN VOICE: When is my next train?

脑音：我的下一班火车是什么时候？

We may never get that far, but it’s a point in the horizon, something to aim for. As I mentioned, companies are warming up. They’re doing the next-best thing, they’re doing the compensation: tiny actual microphones and actual speakers to put into your ear, like in the movie Her. It’s not verbal telepathy in the purest sense, more like vocal telepathy, but it’s closer than a smartphone.

我们可能永远都做不到，但这只是地平线上的一个点，我们希望能有所作为。 如前所述， 公司正在升温 。 他们在做次佳的事情，在做补偿：就像在电影《 Her》中一样，将微型的实际麦克风和实际的扬声器插入您的耳朵。 从最纯粹的意义上来说，这不是言语的心灵感应，更像是语音感应，但它比智能手机更近。

But something isn’t quite right. Verbal telepathy takes over the part of our brain that deals with language. It’s like running a heavy app on an old laptop; it works, everything else slows down, pauses, or crashes.

但是有些事情是不正确的。 言语心灵感应占据了我们处理语言的大脑部分。 就像在旧笔记本电脑上运行沉重的应用程序一样； 它可以正常工作，其他一切都会减慢，暂停或崩溃。

When we read something, Broca’s area spins up. It gets images of words from the eyes and turns them into sounds of speech—spoken with the brain voice. It then ships those word sounds to the Wernicke’s area. Wernicke’s make sense of the sounds. Wernicke’s area doesn’t know if it is reading text on a phone display, or if it is talking to fellow flesh and bones. It either pays all of its attention or nothing at all. A coworker once half-joked, “when we’re in a conversation, the brain freaks out. It’s so complicated, there’s so much going on that it’s paralyzing the brain temporarily.”

当我们读到一些东西时，布罗卡的区域开始旋转。 它从眼睛中获取单词的图像，然后将它们转换为语音-用大脑的声音说出来。 然后将这些单词声音发送到Wernicke的区域。 韦尼克的声音听起来很有意义。 韦尼克(Wernicke)所在的区域不知道它是在阅读电话显示屏上的文字，还是在与同伴的肉骨交谈。 它要么全神贯注，要么一无所有。 一位同事开玩笑说：“当我们谈话时，大脑会吓坏了。 它是如此复杂，发生了太多事情，以至于暂时瘫痪了大脑。”

When it comes to how we interact with computers, it seems our wildest dreams, the most ambitious vision we can think of is a disappointing and naive one: to turn a computer into a person. A brainy butler—and, preferably, it seems, a female one.

关于我们如何与计算机交互，似乎是我们最疯狂的梦想，我们能想到的最雄心勃勃的愿景是令人失望和天真：将计算机变成一个人。 聪明的男管家，最好是女管家。

There are at least two problems here. First, humanness is hard for a computer. To make it worse, humans are exceptionally virtuous at pointing out non-human objects that pretend to be human. So, to follow the dream of creating a computer that imitates humans, scientists end up spending fortunes and decades faking a female butler, rather than solving the problem they set out to do in the first place. Like finding out when the damn train leaves. Second, why should our tools be like us in the first place? We’re not trying to speak to hammers, bridges and or bottle openers.

这里至少有两个问题。 首先，人性对于计算机而言很难。 更糟的是，人类在指出伪装成人类的非人类物体方面格外善良。 因此，为了实现创建模仿人类的计算机的梦想，科学家最终花费大量时间和数十年时间伪造女性管家，而不是首先解决了他们打算解决的问题。 就像找出该死的火车何时离开。 第二，为什么我们的工具首先应该像我们一样？ 我们不是在试图与锤子，桥梁或开瓶器说话。

It seems that in our wildest dreams, the most ambitious vision we can think of is to make our computers behave like a really brainy female butler

看来，在我们最疯狂的梦想中，我们能想到的最雄心勃勃的愿景是使我们的计算机表现得像一个真正聪明的女管家。

And maybe not speaking to all our tools is a good thing. We would find our human-to-human conversations broken up constantly. Hang on, I need to talk to my microwave about the oatmeal. The language centers in our brains are those old laptops I mentioned above; using them for one conversation simply shuts down other conversations. To the brain, texting while talking to a friend is no different from striking up a conversation with a third person, mid-conversation. No wonder that pisses many people off. And if that wasn’t enough, telepathy—or the assistant-for-whatever—based on verbal conversations actually seems to be a step backwards. Comedian Gary Gulman explains:

也许不与我们的所有工具交流是一件好事。 我们会发现我们之间的人与人之间的对话不断中断。 等等，我需要和我的微波炉谈谈燕麦片。 我们大脑中的语言中心是我上面提到的那些旧笔记本电脑。 使用它们进行一次对话只会关闭其他对话。 对大脑而言，在与朋友交谈时发短信与在对话过程中与第三人对话无异。 难怪这激怒了许多人。 如果这还不够的话，基于口头交谈的心灵感应或其他一切助手实际上似乎倒退了一步。 喜剧演员加里·古尔曼(Gary Gulman)解释说：

- Hello 411?

-你好411？

- We’re listening

-我们在听

- Every movie theater within a 25 miles radius of where I’m standing

-我站立的地方25英里范围内的每个电影院

- Where are you standing?

-你站在哪里？

- You tell me.

- 你告诉我。

- Is that all?

- 这就是全部？

This fits with my experiences booking a dozen flights with Pana, a chat app for travel booking. I find myself going back and forth, like this

这与我的经验相吻合，可以使用旅行预订聊天应用程序Pana预订十几个航班。 我发现自己像这样来回走动

Pana: Here are three flights that will take you to Boston [Flight list]

帕纳(Pana)：这是三趟飞往波士顿的航班[航班列表]

Me: How much extra is business?

我：生意多少钱？

Pana: Hang on, I’ll find out

帕纳：等等，我会找出来的

Pana: Here are some options [Flight list]

帕纳：这是一些选项[航班列表]

Me: How about economy plus?

我：经济加上怎么样？

Pana: Hang on I’ll check that for you!

帕纳：等等，我会帮你检查一下！

Pana: Here are some options [Flight list]

帕纳：这是一些选项[航班列表]

Me: That’s too early, I’d like to leave around noon

我：还为时过早，我想中午离开

In a non-conversational app I would hit the sort button, tweak the departure time, and click the business class button to see how much I’m definitely not spending. It could probably work, though. The chat UI could serve up rich controls people could use to get better results. Or the person or artificially intelligent chat bot in the other end of the conversation would have to be extremely smart and proactive. Going back to Gary’s scenario, it would be something like this

在非会话式应用程序中，我将按下排序按钮，调整出发时间，然后单击商务舱按钮以查看我肯定没有花多少钱。 不过，它可能可以工作。 聊天UI可以提供人们可以用来获得更好结果的丰富控件。 否则，对话的另一端的人或人工智能聊天机器人必须非常聪明且积极主动。 回到加里的场景，就像这样

- What’s next?

- 下一步是什么？

Trading information with trust. That’s okay if the movie and restaurant recommendations are spot on, every time. Which they always are. Right?

信任交易信息。 如果每次都能找到电影和餐厅推荐的地方就可以了。 他们一直都是。 对？

If you think I’m being cruel to the written word, you should see what McLuhan had to say,

如果您认为我对文字残忍，您应该看看麦克卢汉所说的话 ，

[When man begins using the alphabet, he] begins reasoning in a sequential linear fashion; he begins categorizing and classifying data. As knowledge is extended in alphabetic form, it is localized and fragmented into specialties, creating division of function, of social classes, of nations and of knowledge — and in the process, the rich interplay of all the senses that characterized the tribal society is sacrificed.

[当人们开始使用字母时，他]开始以连续线性方式进行推理； 他开始对数据进行分类和分类。 随着知识以字母形式扩展，它被局部化并细分为各专业，从而形成职能，社会阶层，国家和知识的划分–在此过程中，牺牲了部族社会特征的所有感官之间的丰富相互作用。

直觉心灵感应 (Intuitive telepathy)

This leads us to the next degree of thought transfer—intuitive telepathy. We already do this, every day. And that’s the point. We don’t have to open an app to find out when we need to go to the bathroom, or eat, or sleep, or drink. We don’t have to type in a search, or even render a conscious thought to grasp that a dark sky means rain. We just know. Either because we remember, or because it sits so deeply in our brain that we don’t even know why we know anymore. Here’s Marc Weiser:

这将我们带入了下一个思维转移程度-直觉的心灵感应。 我们已经每天这样做。 这就是重点。 我们无需打开应用程序即可了解何时需要去洗手间，吃饭，睡觉或喝酒。 我们无需输入搜索内容，甚至不必做出有意识的思考即可掌握黑暗的天空意味着下雨。 我们只知道。 要么是因为我们记得，要么是因为它在我们大脑中的位置如此之深，以至于我们甚至都不知道为什么再知道了。 这是Marc Weiser：

There is no less technology involved in a comfortable pair of shoes, in a fine writing pen, or in delivering the New York Times on a Sunday morning, than in a home PC. Why is one often enraging, the others frequently encalming? We believe the difference is in how they engage our attention. Calm technology engages both the center and the periphery of our attention, and in fact moves back and forth between the two.

与舒适的家用电脑相比，舒适的鞋子，精美的书写笔或周日早晨的《纽约时报》所涉及的技术也不少。 为什么一个人经常发怒，而另一个人经常发怒呢？ 我们相信区别在于他们如何吸引我们的注意力。 冷静的技术既吸引着我们的注意力，也吸引了我们的注意力，实际上，两者之间是来回移动的。

Marc Weiser, The Coming Age of Smart Technology

Marc Weiser， 智能技术的时代

It’s the “center and periphery of attention” bit that’s interesting. As you’re reading this, you’re using the center of your attention, but there’s a ton going on in your peripheral attention. Weather, temperature, amount of daylight, street noise, people, music, coffee steam, barking dogs, church bells, trains, the wooden chair. The center of attention, however, is a one-thing-at-a-time kind of a device, and making sense of language eats up most of it most of the time. So it does seem that the peripheral attention holds a larger promise. We can take in huge loads of information—at the same time—as long as it’s not language. We already do.

有趣的是“注意力的中心和边缘”。 在阅读本文时，您正在使用注意力的中心，但是周围的注意力正在持续不断。 天气，温度，日光量，街道噪音，人，音乐，咖啡蒸汽，吠叫的狗，教堂的钟声，火车，木椅。 但是，关注的中心是一次只能一件事的一种设备，而使语言具有感染力的人在大多数情况下会吃掉大部分东西。 因此，外围人的注意力似乎有更大的希望。 只要不是语言，我们就可以同时获取大量信息。 我们已经做到了。

We’re back in the mall. To play this out, let’s say you’re chatting with your friend, and all of a sudden, you get the sense—a hunch — that you should be leaving soon. You may have gotten a clue from your wrist watch, an intelligent tattoo, your fabric sleeve LEDs, a tactile display on your back or your belt or your tongue, or whatever it is, that’s not important. What’s important is that it took almost no cycles out of your center of attention. You maintained eye contact, and the conversation didn’t stop. You didn’t fall into the mall fountain.

我们回到商场了。 为了解决这个问题，假设您正在与朋友聊天，突然之间，您就感觉到应该早日离开。 您可能已经从手表，智能纹身，织物袖子LED，背部或皮带或舌头上的触觉显示器等获得了线索，这并不重要。 重要的是，您几乎不需要花费任何时间就可以将注意力从关注中心移开。 您保持了眼神交流，并且对话没有停止。 您没有掉进商场喷泉。

Minutes later, as you step onto the station platform, the train arrives. No waiting. Imagine what this would do for finding your way to the hotel in a new city, or figuring out if you should bring an umbrella.

几分钟后，当您踏上车站月台时，火车便到达了。 不用等 想象一下，这会如何找到您在新城市的旅馆的路，或者弄清楚是否应该带把雨伞。

令人惊讶的或令人惊讶的 (Amazingly scary or scaringly amazing)

More or less unconscious telepathy could be scary and amazing, like nuclear technology and robots. We can get helpful robots that run forever on nuclear power, and we can get robots that build and detonate nuclear bombs. In 1984, the regime really wants to read people’s minds, but haven’t yet invented the full technology. Winston has a TV-like device on the wall that sees, hears, displays, and talks, but that’s it. Basically a Samsung tv.

像核技术和机器人一样，或多或少的无意识心灵感应可能令人恐惧和惊人。 我们可以获得永久性地依靠核能运行的有用的机器人，并且可以获得建造和引爆核弹的机器人。 1984年 ，该政权确实想读懂人们的思想，但尚未发明完整的技术。 温斯顿在墙上有一个类似于电视的设备 ，可以观看，收听，显示和交谈，仅此而已。 基本上是三星电视 。

The bright side of intuitive telepathy could be many times larger than the scary one. It lets us push boring stuff into the background. It lets us focus on what matters: talking to people, making things, eating meatball banh mi, going on runs, calling parents, playing with kids. Things that most people don’t think they’re doing enough today.

直观心灵感应的光明面可能比可怕的灵光面大很多倍。 它使我们可以将无聊的内容推入后台。 它使我们能够专注于重要的事情：与人交谈，做事，吃肉丸子，跑步，给父母打电话，和孩子一起玩。 大多数人认为他们今天做得不够的事情。

And, again, we may never get intuitive telepathy, and that’s okay. We may never want intuitive telepathy, and that’s also okay. It’s the path leading to intuitive telepathy, the products that fall out on the way, that’s what this is about.

同样，我们可能永远也不会获得直觉的心灵感应，这没关系。 我们可能永远都不希望直观的心灵感应，那也没关系。 这就是通向直观心灵感应的道路，即将推出的产品就是这样。

Designing a product comes down to making a series of compensations. There are feature compensations. Buttons are feature compensations for not knowing what you want to do next. Buttons are intent sensors, basically. And then there’s the category compensation. A weather app partly compensates for not handing you an umbrella as you leave the door, or just canceling your picnic before everyone packs their white short sleeves. At one time in history, writing a letter was the best compensation for not telegraphing. Telegraphing for not faxing. Faxing for not emailing. Emailing for not texting. Texting for not…Snapchatting? Snapchatting for not…well, we’ll find out soon.

设计产品归结为一系列补偿。 有功能补偿。 按钮是对不知道下一步要做什么的功能补偿。 基本上，按钮是意图传感器。 然后是类别补偿。 气象应用程序可以部分补偿您在离开门时不给您一把雨伞，或者只是在每个人都打包好白色短袖之前取消野餐。 在历史上的某个时候，写一封信是不打电话的最好补偿。 电报不传真。 传真不发送电子邮件。 电子邮件不发短信。 不发短信…Snapchating吗？ Snapchating不是…嗯，我们会尽快发现。

What’s probably even more interesting, the product that gets the closest to telepathy without introducing too many new pains is the product most likely to dominate the market within the next decade — for a decade. Even if the current category leader just got a new logo, or is big in China.

可能更有趣的是，在没有引入太多新痛苦的情况下最接近心灵感应的产品是该产品在未来十年(十年内)最有可能占领市场。 即使目前的品类负责人刚刚获得一个新的徽标 ，还是在中国大有作为 。

So if you keep asking “what does this compensate for,” you’ll eventually end up with telepathy.

因此，如果您不断问“这能补偿什么”，您最终将陷入心灵感应。

Or will you?

还是会吗？

Navigating to a place is an example of a task that may be best solved not by telepathy, but teleportation. A paper map compensates for not showing all the streets in the world, for not letting you search, and for not just knowing where you are on the map. Google Maps does all that, but it compensate for not already knowing where you’re going, not knowing all the shortcuts, and not letting you focus on traffic. At the end of the day, all maps, be they made of paper or bits, compensate for not being able to just teleport you to where you’re going.

导航到某个位置是一项任务的示例，可以通过心灵感应而不是心灵感应来最好地解决。 纸质地图可以弥补不显示世界上所有街道的情况，不让您搜索以及不仅仅知道您在地图上的位置。 Google Maps可以完成所有这些工作，但是可以弥补您不知道要去的地方，不知道所有的快捷方式以及不让您专注于交通带来的好处。 归根结底，所有地图，无论是用纸还是纸屑制成，都弥补了无法仅仅将您传送到要去的地方。

心灵感应，心灵传送和爱 (Telepathy, teleportation, and love)

So that’s telepathy and teleportation as directional goals. There are other tools that could slide into the background, but probably should not. They are the things we love. The things that slow down life in pleasant ways. Or, as Claus once put it, “telepathy is for the design of unloved things.”

所以这就是心灵感应和心灵传送作为方向目标。 还有其他工具可以滑入后台，但可能不应该。 他们是我们爱的东西。 以令人愉悦的方式减慢生活的事物。 或者，就像克劳斯曾经说过的那样，“电话是为不受欢迎的事物设计的。”

At the end of the day, maps compensate for not beaming you to where you’re going.

归根结底，地图弥补了您无法将自己引向目的地的不足。

Soylent is not going to replace all meals. Eating a meal is not always a compensation for having a frail human body that needs nutrition. Emptily staring at the ocean is not a compensation for teleporting across it. Telling a joke is not a compensation for your best friend already knowing the joke. Painting, singing and acting are not compensations for the audience not already feeling the same emotion. These are things we love, and telepathy should help us get more of them, not remove them.

Soylent不会取代所有餐点。 吃一顿饭并不一定能补偿人体需要营养的脆弱。 空洞地盯着海洋并不能作为穿越海洋的补偿。 开个玩笑并不代表您最好的朋友已经知道这个玩笑。 绘画，唱歌和表演并不能弥补观众尚未感受到的相同情感。 这些是我们喜欢的事物，心灵感应应该帮助我们获得更多，而不是消除它们。

So roughly, we have two boxes for our products. One for doing things we love, and one for doing things we don’t care about. Sometimes tools are able to move from one box to the other. They are able to distract us from the fact that we don’t care. As an example, it’s okay that those beautiful stairs in Mexico City are not teleportation. Except that night a few weeks ago its residents were woken up by a 6.1 earthquake. People at the top floors were simply watching people on the lower floors running out of the building.

大致来说，我们的产品有两个盒子。 一种用于做我们喜欢的事情，另一种用于做我们不关心的事情。 有时工具能够从一个盒子移动到另一个盒子。 他们能够分散我们对我们不在乎这一事实的注意力。 举个例子，墨西哥城那些漂亮的楼梯不是可以隐形传送的。 除了几个星期前的那个晚上，它的居民被6.1级地震唤醒。 顶层的人只是看着楼下的人跑出大楼。

As designers, we’re enabling telepathy. We can use this fact to think about how much that extra button or that long line of copy will slow down the thought transfer. We may never get genuine telepathy, but we can think about the next step towards it. As long as that next step is not going into the mall fountain.

作为设计师，我们正在实现心灵感应。 我们可以利用这一事实来思考额外的按钮或较长的复制行会减慢思想传递的速度。 我们可能永远不会获得真正的心灵感应，但我们可以考虑下一步。 只要下一步不进入购物中心喷泉。

Follow @mortenjust on Twitter for experiments in contemporary telepathy and how to actually use this stuff in today’s UI. Then hit the green heart.

在Twitter上关注@mortenjust ，以进行当代心灵感应实验，以及如何在当今的用户界面中实际使用这些东西。 然后打绿色的心。

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/your-ui-is-your-products-humble-compensation-for-not-being-telepathic-b467d022d640/