[IxDA Discuss] Request: Online Pattern Libraries/Style Guides?

[Barbara Ballard]

On 2/16/07, Vermette, Joan <Joan.Vermette at fmr.com> wrote:
> I don't see that depth in, for instance, Jenifer Tidwell or Douglas Van
> Duyne, and other web-based pattern languages.
>
> Imagine if you started a pattern string with, say, Alan Cooper/Robert
> Reimann's interaction design axioms -- say "optimize for
> intermediates"...rather than Van Duyne's "Basic e-Commerce" or Tidwell's
> "Doing Things."  I think you'd get a much richer and more useful
> language., whether generic or organization-specific.

(book references below are to Designing the Mobile User Experience,
available now in Europe and in April in the US)

There's a reason why the book chapter preceding "Patterns" was "Design
Principles".  Because they are different. A pattern is a good solution
usable by a developer or less experienced designer, a principle is a
heuristic that a good designer can use.  "Leverage immediacies" is
great, but I can't really tell a developer to do that.

I think of patterns as schema (for those of you with a psychological
bent): a person holding a schema recognizes a set of stimuli as
comprising a situation, and has a built-in process for handling the
situation.

You can't just sew patterns together and get a good experience.  It
will be better than sewing together in-expertly designed solutions to
the same problems, but it still won't be good.


For the mobile UI pattern library, I'm putting out the generic library
as a wiki.  It's an education to developers and most designers.  In
the meantime, we'll happily help a company put together a corporate
pattern library.  Definitely different.


-- 
Barbara Ballard
barbara at littlespringsdesign.com 1-785-838-3003