便池中的设计 苍蝇
I have seen one of the finest instances of user interface design ever, and I saw it in the men's room at Schipol airport in Amsterdam.
我曾经看见过一个及其出色的用户界面设计，我记得我是在阿姆斯特丹(荷兰首都)的Schipol机场的男士洗手间看到它的。
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In each of the urinals, there is a little printed blue fly. It looks a lot like a real fly, but it's definitely iconic - you're not supposed to believe it's a real fly. It's printed near the drain, and slightly to the left.
在每个小便池中，都印着一个小绿头苍蝇。看上去它非常像一只真苍蝇，但事实上它只是个图案——当然，设计者并不需要你认识到这一点。它印在排水口附近，稍稍偏左一点的地方。
I asked a user interface designer I knew at Nortel about this, who happened to be Dutch and who was familiar with this particular piece of toilet technology. And he told me that washrooms are much cleaner when these flies are there. Presumably because they encourage, in a very subtle way, good aim.
就此事我问了一个用户界面设计师，他正好去过荷兰并且熟知洗手间里的情况，尤其是我感兴趣的这部分。他告诉我说，当印有这些苍蝇以后，洗手间里干净了许多。推测起来，设计人员以一种非常狡猾的方式，给了使用者一个绝妙的目标。
Now I love this kind of interface, because it's so psychologically clever. If they had put big circular targets, and arrows with a little printed message pee here! (like it would probably be if anybody ever tried such a thing in America), it would backfire. A certain percentage of men would deliberately try to disobey this instruction.
现在，我非常喜欢这类交互界面，因为从心理学上看，它非常地聪明。如果给小便池的排水口设计为一个大而圆的标靶，并用带有印着往这撒文字的箭头作指示（如果你曾在美国上过厕所你很可能见过我所描述的小便池），那么势必会引起大家的逆反心理。将会有一部分人故意地不服从上面的指示。
But this innocuous little fly just invites being peed upon, if such a thing makes any sense, but in a non-insistent, gentle, and entirely effective way. If you're the user interface specialist Donald Norman, I suppose you'd say the fly affords being peed on.
但是这只无伤大雅的小苍蝇却可以“邀请”大家这么做。如果这件事有什么意义的话，也是在以一种不经意的，温和的，并且非常生动的方式感染你。即使你是用户界面的专家Donald Norman，我想你也会毫不客气地说“这只苍蝇活该被淹死”。
I would love to know if Dutch toilet user interface designers (there's a title for a business card!) tried focus groups with other icons - bees, smiley faces, eye icons, circles, letters? I would love to know what process they used to decide that it should be slightly to the left.
我很想知道荷兰洗手间设计者们是否尝试过别的图案——比如蜜蜂，笑脸，眼睛，圆圈和文字？我也想知道什么使得他们决定苍蝇图标应该稍稍偏左一点。
My hat is off to the inventor of this design.
我向此设计的发明者脱帽致敬！
几个著名的站点链接了这篇文章，导致更多的其它站点链接到它，以至于...
So I've now had e-mails from some friendly Dutch industrial designers and other interface professionals, who are happier than one might normally predict to tell me the details of their nation's clever solutions for pee-pee time.
现在，我收到了一些友好的荷兰工艺设计师和一些界面专家寄过来的Email，他们都非常自豪地告诉我他们民族对小便问题的解决之道。
A Google search onvlieg urinoir turns up some interesting stuff. For those who don't read Dutch (which includes me - I can make out the gist if I squint real hard and pretend it's badly-spelled German), here are the interesting findings: (Thanks to correspondents Branko Collin and Inne ten Have)
用Google搜索vlieg urinoir（男用便池）会出现许多有趣的资料。对于那些不能理解荷兰语（包括我——只有将它看做拼写不正确的德文时我才能明白个大概），这里有一些有趣的新发现（感谢与我通信的Branko和Inne ten Have）。
A discussion about the question why the fly is on the left and not in the middle:
关于苍蝇为什么在左边而不在中间的讨论：
Men are mostly righthanded, so they hold their little fella slightly aimed to the left. (Really? Wouldn't the pull be more to the right?)
1 人们大多习惯用右手，他们使用他们的小伙伴时目标将会稍稍偏左。（真的吗？难道不会由于拉力更偏右）
Pure physics: if the fly were in the middle, all the splatter would come back; now it splashes to the side
2 纯物理角度：如果苍蝇在中间，所有液体都要弹回来；现在它们弹向另一边。
A new technology is being introduced: this is a plastic strip that will change color when peed upon. (This seems to me like a reasonable next step. User Interfaces typically benefit from immediate feedback, after all.)
一种技术被提出：有一种塑料条，当撒尿到上面时会改变颜色。(我认为这么做是合理的。毕竟，好的用户界面就在于用户对它的即时反馈。)
An alternate design shows a urinal with the image of a burning candle, right in the center this time. Apparently, it is special that in this case the image is part of the ceramic, which saves on cleaning. The flame is apparently an invention by scientists of a German university so that men can quench their boyhood desire to become a fire fighter. (!)
有一种与此相当的设计，在便池的中间显示一个燃烧着的蜡烛图形。显然，在这种情况下蜡烛图形是陶瓷的一部分，而有了它服务员可以减少清洁次数。这是德国大学的科学家们想到的，这样人们可以在洗手间实现他们儿时救火的理想。
After the Dutch industrial designers weighed in, I started getting e-mail from British folks knowledgeable in Victorian toilet technology. They have been able to provide the most likely origin of the idea (thanks to correspondents Rupert Goodwins and Jez):
