Comments on Pattern Languages for Interaction Design

David Lumerman — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:52:47 GMT

Interesting dialog.

I have found that in the corporate setting design patterns help management to accept the consistency that design patterns bring as well as providing a comfortable space for buy in.

They also help reign in developers and Content Management Application (CMS) user when they want to go off the reservation by pointing to established templates instead of speaking to generalities of consistency.

Peter Meany — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:30:51 GMT

Cool discussion. I especially liked the back and forth on corporate, proprietary pattern libraries vs. the notion of open sharing of UX patterns. I’m for the open sharing of patterns and believe most patterns implementations are unique anyway to some degree.

My UX team just released Quince, a free UX pattern explorer that is designed to allow easy access to a large pattern library and to foster a UX community where people don’t have to “reinvent the wheel” to solve common design problems.

Check it out: Quince.Infragistics.com. We hope to add to the library through our own exposure to new patterns as well as through contributions by community members.

Peter

Carlos Abler — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:46:27 GMT

Awesome stuff.

I think organizations that try to make these things proprietary is a waste of time. Extending what was said in the interview, this is definitely one genre of knowledge that will become highly refined in the discourse field of general practice.

What organizations should be focused on is not reinventing the wheel or trying to create a walled garden in a jungle, (I love mixing metaphors), but they should be focused on how to educate their staff about them. They should create/aggregate handy reference tools and provide training so that staff knows where to look and when.

The competitive problem—for those who care to be competitive—is not who has the best interaction design pattern library, it is which organization is the best at implementing the right patterns for the right solutions.

Carlos

Mike Schindler — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:24:50 GMT

It’s good to see several practitioners essentially agreeing on the purpose and value of patterns. Design to me is about problem solving—or resolving different tensions, which are typically unique on a given project. The peril of improperly using patterns (forcing a solution into a problem) often ends up counter to the fundamental benefits of pattern use. Efficiency and consistency can both be used to a fault and often times hurt a design. Rather it’s better to really understand the problem first, and then use patterns as a starting point.

Excellent article.

Christian Crumlish — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:30 GMT

Just added a few more to our list (the same one linked in Erin’s comment above)...

Erin Malone — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 19:39:00 GMT

We are constantly adding related pattern sites to the Designing Social Interfaces wiki – which is the companion wiki to the book I am writing with Christian. Additionally Bill Scott has a list on his Designing Web Interfaces site.

Christian Crumlish — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:11:07 GMT

I have been maintaining a list of pattern libraries and am also in the process of completing a redesign of the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library, which will include a section where that list can be shared. If anyone else has such a list I’d be equally happy to point to it. Ideally, I’d like to distinguish “true” pattern libraries from catalogs of visual examples of patterns.

Will Evans — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:49:54 GMT

Anders,

Very good point – I should have included links to all the various pattern libraries out there. I’ll gather some and post them in the comments for now, and if it gets to onerous – a blog posting.
Here’s one that Xian is curating:
The Designing Social Interfaces patterns wiki
http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns.wiki/in…

Of course, Jen Tidell’s http://designinginterfaces.com site has a lot from here book, right there on the site, and very useful!

emily conrad — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:47:03 GMT

This is a great article and very topical. I mentioned the idea of a pattern language to a client of ours last week, and after explaining the benefits they got it. UX doesn’t need to be a rigid set of rules, but logical guidelines that yield innovation.

shivan kannan — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:47:07 GMT

This is an excellent article. It is indeed true that open sourcing the patterns has all its goodies. Would be nice to give pointers at the end that are relating to the article.

Don Habas — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:15:59 GMT

Thanks Will. Great article.

Anders Toxboe — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:29:55 GMT

You forgot to link to the different libraries out there…

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/
http://welie.com
http://ui-patterns.com

And a bunch more…

Todd Zaki Warfel — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:33:39 GMT

Great article. I think the compass quote is one of the best analogies for patterns. I’d also agree that while there’s no technical obligation to make pattern libraries public, it is the responsible thing to do. Looking forward to your book. Keep up the great work, gang.