人體工程學在進步還是倒退 懷念旋鈕

I studied psychology as a subsidiary to my politics degree at university. In the mid-1970s, psychology was the media studies of its day — fashionable but usually chosen because it was easy, and most of the stuff we were taught was frictionless. There was not a lot to get to grips with.

我大學時主修政治，輔修心理學。上世紀70年代中期的心理學就像現在的媒體學：時髦，但選修這門課通常是因爲學起來容易，而且我們學的絕大部分東西都毫無難度，沒多少東西要認真對待的。

One lecture, however, has stayed with me. It was about ergonomics, the science of designing machines, systems and processes that are efficient and comfortable to use. It was the heyday of awful design and I was so taken with the thought of a job in which you could spend your time improving things, I flirted briefly with the idea of becoming an ergonomist.

但有個講座給我留下了深刻印象，那就是人體工程學。這是一門研究如何恰當設計機器、系統和流程，使其用起來更高效更舒適的學科。當時是爛設計橫行的年代，我對你可以投入時間去改良事物的職業如此神往，以至於一度想成爲一名人體工程學專家。

It did not happen, and I have never knowingly met one. But I get the sense — ergonomists will doubtless send me user-friendly emails to confirm or deny this — that ergonomists are not rock stars of modern industrial enterprise.

那沒能成爲現實，我也從沒遇到一位人體工程學專家。但我能感覺到，人體工程學專家不是現代工業企業的搖滾明星。（他們肯定會給我發送深入淺出的郵件來證實或否認這一點。）

In kitchen appliances especially, the ergonomist’s voice is ignored — at least if the absurd counterintuitiveness of so many products is any guide.

尤其是在廚房電器上，人體工程學專家的聲音被忽視了——至少從如此多奇葩的反直觀產品來看是這樣。

A friend who knows Heston Blumenthal has just adopted a microwave which, he told me, the British chef and restaurateur was not using at home because it was “too complicated”. That must be one complicated microwave.

一位認識赫斯頓.布魯門塔爾(Heston Blumenthal)的朋友剛剛採用了一臺微波爐，他跟我說，這位英國大廚和餐館老闆在自己家裏不用，因爲它“太複雜”了。那肯定是一臺非常複雜的微波爐。

For simplicity and ergonomic bliss, the most perfect mechanism for controlling levels has to be the old-fashioned rotary knob. I say old-fashioned because knobs — volume controls you turn, tuning knobs, treble and bass controls, brightness on a television, all of them — have almost disappeared over the past 20 years.

就簡潔和符合人體工程學而言，控制水平的最完美機械裝置當屬老式旋鈕。我說老式是因爲旋鈕在過去20年幾乎完全消失了，比如音量旋鈕、調諧旋鈕、高低音控制旋鈕、電視亮度旋鈕，諸如此類。

In the mid 1990s they were supplanted by buttons with left, right, up and down arrows on them, by which you “incrementally” (some might say jumpily) increased or decreased a level. They needed a display to show you what your hand and ear, in a wholly intuitive neurological combo, had previously told you.

20世紀90年代中期，旋鈕被上下左右箭頭按鈕取代，讓你可以“逐步地”（有些人或許會說“跳躍地”）調高或調低一級。這種按鈕需要一個顯示器來向你展示的東西，過去你的手和耳朵（兩者構成一個完全直觀的神經系統組合）可以告訴你。

Knobs fell into demise for understandable reasons. Behind the volume and tone, knobs in the pre-digital age were potentiometers — mechanically variable resistances, which as you turned them provided a smooth, analogue change in the energy reaching the amplifier.

出於可以理解的原因，旋鈕遭到淘汰。在數字化之前的時代，控制音量音調的旋鈕是電位器，即機械可變電阻，當你轉動它們時，可以平穩、相應地改變輸出到擴音器的電量。

Tuning was done with a variable capacitor, also wholly mechanical — a stack of fins that intermeshed in concert with your knob-turning to change the capacitance, which, in combination with a tight coil of wire, determined the frequency you heard.

完成調諧的是一個可變電容器，它也是全機械的，由一疊相互齧合的翅片構成。當你轉動旋鈕時，可變電容器改變電容，配合一個緊密纏繞的線圈，可以決定你收聽到的頻率。

Both components could be miniaturised. Old transistor radios had tiny versions of each. But when devices began to be run by software, “pots” and variable capacitors became redundant. Level changes and tuning could be done “solid state” — meaning without mechanical parts, which was cheaper for manufacturers and looked futuristic.

這兩個部件都可以小型化，老式晶體管收音機就有微型音量旋鈕和調諧旋鈕。但當電子設備開始通過軟件運行時，電位器和可變電容器變得多餘。水平變化和調諧能夠在“固態”下實現，意思就是沒有機械部件，這對製造商來說更加便宜，看上去還有未來感。

The downside was that the new forms of software control were horrible to use — fiddly, slow and imprecise. Car radios, where all-button controls were enthusiastically adopted, were dangerous because they required you to take your eyes off the road to squint at the display.

缺點是軟件控制這種新方式並不好用，繁瑣、緩慢且不精確。積極採用全按鈕控制的汽車收音機帶來危險，因爲它們要求你把目光從道路上收回，眯着眼去看顯示屏。

Almost overnight, anything with a volume control — the older and ergonomically superior choice — came to be seen as retro and quirky.

幾乎一夜之間，任何有音量控制——老式、從人體工程學上說更加優越的選擇——的產品，都被看成復古和怪異。

In 1999, Tom DeVesto, a Boston audio engineer, had the idea of building a radio with no controls other than volume, tuning knobs and simple dials.

1999年，波士頓音頻工程師湯姆.德維斯特(Tom DeVesto)想做出一個只有音量、調諧旋鈕和簡單調諧度盤的收音機。

“They’re nicer to use,” he says. “Other people might like holding buttons down, but to me the intuitive way to control things was to turn a knob. There was no need to reinvent the wheel.”

他說：“它們用起來更順手。其他人可能喜歡按下按鈕，但對我來說，旋轉旋鈕纔是更直觀的控制方式。沒必要重新發明車輪。”

But when he started showing his Tivoli One radio to stores, retail buyers in the US did not get it. “I still remember one shaking his head. He said, ‘You have to have a dial, a display, that lights up, with all kinds of levels on it.’”

但當他開始向商家展示他的Tivoli One收音機時，美國的零售買家們並不買賬。“我還記得其中一個人搖着頭說，你必須有一個調諧度盤，一個顯示器，能亮起來的，上面能看到一級一級的。”

Mr DeVesto says his Tivoli radios went on to sell more than 10m units globally, usually in the nicer, John Lewis-type stores. Como Audio, a radio company he founded this year, also majors on knobs — even if today, with old-style components having almost disappeared, the knobs synthesise mechanical controls.

德維斯特說，他的Tivoli收音機後來在全球售出超過1000萬臺，通常是在約翰.劉易斯（John Lewis，英國百貨商店——譯者注）這類較高檔的商店。今年他創建了Como Audio，這家收音機公司仍主打旋鈕。即使當今老式組件幾乎已消失，但可以用旋鈕來合成機械控制。

“You have to work today to give it some feeling that turning the knob is doing something, when all it’s really doing is sending zeroes and ones to the computer,” says Mr DeVesto.

德維斯特說：“如今你得想辦法，讓轉動旋鈕的人得到一些反饋，即便其真正用途是向計算機發送一堆0和1。”

Knobs still feature on some expensive HiFi equipment and recording engineers’ control panels, but other attempts to reintroduce the joy of the knob to a younger generation have, sadly, not been very successful.

旋鈕仍出現在一些昂貴的高保真音響設備和錄音工程師的控制面板上，但是很可惜，將旋鈕之樂趣重新介紹給年輕一代的其他嘗試不怎麼成功。

Marshall, the British guitar amplifier-maker, launched a mobile phone last year called the London, which had a thumb-wheel control knob that it called a “scroll wheel”. The phone is still available but it is not one you often see in use.

英國吉他音箱製造商Marshall去年推出一款手機，名爲“London”，該手機有一個被稱作“滾輪”的拇指旋輪控制旋鈕。市面上仍能看到這款手機，但你不常見到人們使用它。

LG had even less of a breakthrough in 2013 when it brought out a 32-inch LED television, the Classic, with old-school on/off, channel change and volume knobs. You can still get them, but the Classic did not precipitate a rush back to knobs.

LG在2013年推出了32英寸LED電視“Classic”，設有老式的開關、頻道調節和音量旋鈕，該產品甚至更談不上突破。Classic現在仍能買到，但它沒有帶來旋鈕的迴歸。

A shame. Knobs you turn (and, while we are at it, big, chunky buttons you press) are not some atavistic relic, but an ergonomic advance — albeit a nostalgic one. In a perfect technological world, they would be the next big thing, not a throwback.

太可惜了。你轉動的旋鈕（既然說到這裏，還有我們現在使用的胖乎乎的大按鈕）並不是什麼返祖餘孽，而是人體工程學的一大進步——儘管帶有懷舊情懷。在一個完美的技術世界裏，它們將成爲下一款轟動產品，而不是個復古玩意兒。