Comments on Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study

jay rogers — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:47 GMT

The links to pattern_index.php and pattern_queue.php are broken. It would be *so* divine if these images were available – I’d love to be able to read the IA of the pattern library. Help! Help! Erin K Malone, I invoke you!

Maciej Stachowiak — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:38 GMT

Please fix larger pictures – could you contact with autor ?

Phil Wilson — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:33 GMT

AFAICT all the links to larger versions of images in this article are broken. Can someone please fix these, as this article is very interesting and the images are crucial!

Christopher Fahey — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:18:11 GMT

Erin, your “in between” models are good for smaller-scale projects. I did a little more thinking about how this might scale down even farther: for a single person working on a single project. I thought about the methods interface designers of all kinds employ to re-use UI elements across multiple interfaces or pages without re-inventing the wheel again and again.

In many ways, this “pattern library” concept is analogous to the “master/instance” model used in many design applications. I’m thinking of “symbols” in Fireworks and Flash, “masters” in Visio, etc. Every time you drag-and-drop a stencil combobox in Visio, you are using a kind of pattern library, although one that only contains the subatomic particles that comprise the language of user interface design.

The concept works well at many levels.

Erin Malone — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:15 GMT

Chris – you are right – the site and workflow are more than what a smaller team would expect or be able to afford. On the other hand though – taking the template of the pattern itself and using that to collect your documentation (i.e. patterns) and then just hosting them on a website with a central index is definitely doable. If there are only a couple of people, writing them in the template style and then keeping them in a notebook works well.

We contemplated using Movable Type as our “CMS” but since we had a developer and could do the work to support a more robust categorization scheme we didn’t but there is no reason why you couldn’t.

If you are doing documentation of your work and want to capture it in a way for REUSE then abstracting it into a set of patterns is a way to go. The rest is extra.

Christopher Fahey — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:39:38 GMT

Building a whole workflow and a support web site for a web site pattern library is pretty darn cool. I wish I could afford it!

Let’s face it, as cool as it is, this Yahoo! pattern library resource is bigger than most web site projects most of us will ever work on. It looks at least 10x as big as B&A, for example. I dont know if this sort of thing would work for companies without multi-billion dollar valuations and oodles of money to spend on internal sandbox/R&D projects.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this tool is impressive! I just wouldn’t want anyone who works for a company with less than 100 UI designers and IAs on staff to think that this sort of approach is practical for their firm.

My mind is spinning thinking of how such a system might be scaled down to be practical for smaller web site projects (by “smaller”, I mean budgets under a million dollars). How can I achieve the results described above for a typical project of mine, where spending even a couple of person-days on such work would be prohibitively expensive?

Riad — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:15 GMT

Are the platform design group and the User Experience people part of the same entity?

erin malone — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:15 GMT

The “we” in this article refers to the Platform design group. The team that built the library consists of a webdeveloper/sysadmin/database creator, an interaction designer, myself as “the client” writing the first functional requirements document and overseeing direction, and early on an information architect. There are others on the Platform Design team who have had some involvement in this tool – visual designers, but that is in the context of our larger design intranet. Additionally, the patterns are authored by designers across the company as well as by members of the PDG group.

Jess — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:15 GMT

Can you tell me more about the “we” in the article -what is the makeup of the central group that coordinated this effort? How many people, what skillsets?

fromtheinside — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:44:41 GMT

It doesn’t work and no one uses it.

Jason — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:15 GMT

It would be interesting to see a paragraph on the actual use cycle of the library. For example, what a designer goes through when creating something new, how they interact with the library, etc. I could see using something like this in any organization with a development team greater than a handful of people, so long as using it produced a net gain.

Matt Leacock — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:14 GMT

Max: I think these are great topics for a follow-up article after our library has had a chance to grow and we’ve had an opportunity to chart what has worked and what hasn’t.

Jason: Although I agree there aren’t many companies that have the reach that Yahoo! has, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a host of companies with large design staffs that would be interested in rolling a similar system out internally. You raise a good point though: for smaller teams, the payoffs are proportionately smaller. (I’d argue that knowledge sharing is an easier problem to solve for 15 people than say, 150 people, however.)

heyotwell — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:26:14 GMT

This is an interesting article, but it’s not really about Patterns, is it? This is the story of designing and building a content management system and process, which just happened to contain Design Patterns.

Honestly, although this challenge is real, and this solution seems incredibly thorough and interesting, the real issues around “implementing a pattern library in the real world” aren’t addressed here: how do you get people to use the patterns, not just contribute them? How do you correct people when patterns are used incorrectly? How are people made aware of instances of pattern-use, so they can see the (good or bad) results of using patterns?

Max Lord — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:14 GMT

Thanks for an interesting article. I have one question: Is Yahoo really “the real world” ?

This sounds like an amazing system, but I am just curious how many other organizations exist in the world with the need for, and resources to accomplish a project like this. What could this project look like if it was for a team an order of magnitude smaller than Yahoo’s?

jas0nh0ng — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:39:39 GMT

FYI, the URL to our book on design patterns, The Design of Sites, is:

http://designofsites.com/

We’re also working on a second edition now, any comments welcome.