电脑进度条是谁发明的？
Who Made That Progress Bar?

“People wait for all sorts of things every day, sometimes more happily than others,” wrote the interface designer Bob Stahl in a 1986 article for Computerworld. “The problem is how the user feels about waiting.” At the time, machines were often slow and unreliable, and users didn’t always know when their programs crashed. A “progress bar” might mitigate frustration, Stahl suggested, by signaling that bits were flipping with a purpose somewhere deep inside the C.P.U.

“每天人们因为各种事情等待，有时等待的感觉比其他时候更愉快，”界面设计师鲍勃·斯特尔(Bob Stahl)1986年在给《电脑世界》(Computerworld)的文章中写道，“问题是用户对等待的感觉是怎样的。”那时候，电脑通常很慢，而且不可靠，用户并不总是知道程序何时会崩溃。斯特尔说，一个“进度条”可能会缓解人们的沮丧，表明后台智能传输服务正在中央处理器深处的某个地方运转。

The push to make computers more user-friendly gained momentum in the early 1980s. At a 1985 conference on the nascent field of computer-human interactions, a graduate student named Brad A. Myers presented a paper on the importance of what he called “percent-done progress indicators.” “I had the sense that they were useful and important, and not used as much as they should have been,” Myers says today. (He’s now on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University.) He told his colleagues that progress bars made computer users less anxious and more efficient, and could even help them to “relax effectively” at work.

20世纪80年代早期，让电脑更人性化的势头大涨。在1985年一次关于人机互动这个新生领域的会议上，一个名叫布拉德·A·迈尔斯(Brad A. Myers)的研究生提交了一篇论文，关于他所说的“已完成的百分比进度的指示器”的重要性。“我当时有一种感觉，它们很有用，很重要，但是还不够普及，”现在迈尔斯说（他现在在卡内基梅隆大学任教）。他告诉同事们进度条能减少电脑用户的焦虑，提高效率，甚至能帮助他们在工作时“更有效地放松”。

To prove his point, Myers asked 48 fellow students to run searches on a computer database, with and without a progress bar for guidance. (He used a capsule that filled from left to right — like a giant thermometer from a charity drive, tipped on its side.) Then he had them rate their experience. Eighty-six percent said they liked the bars. “People didn’t mind so much if it was inaccurate,” Myers says. “They still preferred the progress bar to not having anything at all.”

为了证明自己的观点，迈尔斯让48位同学在有进度条指示和没有进度条指示这两种情况下在一个电脑数据库里进行搜索（他用的是一个从左向右填充的胶囊——就像慈善活动上巨大的温度计，向一侧倾斜）。然后他让他们评价自己的体验。86%的同学说，他们喜欢进度条。“人们不太介意它是否准确，”迈尔斯说，“跟没有任何提示相比，他们更喜欢有这个进度条。”

Since the ‘80s, other kinds of progress bars — audio, tactile — have been suggested, but the horizontal form prevails. There have been some refinements: Bars now strobe in color, or show an animated ribbing that slides back against the grain. These effects can fool the brain and make a bar appear to move more quickly, says Chris Harrison, another Carnegie Mellon scientist. Because people hate to see a progress bar reach a standstill, some inch forever forward even while a task is stalling out. For Harrison, these tricks raise a funny question: “Do users really want the truth, or do they want the more relaxed, more comfortable experience?”

从80年代起，也有人提议采用其他种类的进度条——声音的，触觉的——但是最流行的还是水平形式的。也出现一些改进：现在的进度条是彩色的，或者有向后滑动的动态罗纹。卡内基梅隆大学的另一位科学家克里斯·哈里森(Chris Harrison)说，这些效果能欺骗大脑，让进度条看起来动得更快。因为人们最讨厌看见进度条停下来，所以有些进度条设计得会永远向前挪一点，尽管这个任务可能已经停止了。哈里森觉得这些小把戏提出了一个有趣的问题：“用户们真正想要的是事实还是更放松、更舒服的体验？”

There’s a deeper question still: Is a progress bar a tool to make us more efficient or a sop that helps us pass the time? Its ancestor, the pen-and-paper “progress chart,” showed up in the early 20th century and was hailed at the time as a major innovation. It “refers all facts to the irreducible and final element of human life — time,” wrote Walter Polakov, an early pioneer in project management (and dedicated Marxist), in 1923. “Because it is true to the human dimension, it is both human and humane; hence it obliterates conflicts between men and management, promotes the fullest exercise of man’s creative forces and places work in its proper relation to life.”

还有一个更深层次的问题：进度条到底是让我们更有效率的工具还是帮我们打发时间的小贿赂？它的前身——用笔在纸上画出的“进度表”——是在20世纪早期出现的，在当时被称赞为一个重大发明。项目管理的先驱（虔诚的马克思主义者）沃尔特·波拉科夫(Walter Polakov)在1923年写道，它“指示的是人类生活不可消减、不可更改的因素——时间，因为它忠于人类的本质，它既体现了人类的本性，又有人情味，所以它化解了人和管理之间的矛盾，促进了人类创造力的充分发挥，摆正了工作与生活的关系”。

本文最初发表于2014年3月9日。

翻译：王艳