posted by Ray @ Sunday, July 30, 2006
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Our culture advances as we expand our language. In 1977 Pattern Language was published and the grammar of design was forever changed. Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, et. al. were examining buildings and greatly influenced architecture with the introduction of design patterns. Will Wright’s Sim City was greatly influenced by Pattern Language. In 1995 with the advent of object oriented computer languages, design patterns became part of software grammar with the publication of Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by the GoF. There is also the Portland Pattern Repository created by Cunningham. In 2006 Jenifer Tidwell wrote about Patterns for Effective Interaction Design and Yahoo has published their Design Pattern Library for Web Developers. There are many other excellent examples that demonstrate the significance of design patterns.
A design patterns describes a problem, the context and a solution. A design pattern does not include the solution to a specific problem (e.g., code). It is a method to solve a common problem. Yahoo, Tidwel and others offer longer explanations.
Pattern language is a living language with new patterns being added and old patterns being revised. There is also debate and commentary on the design patterns. MultiPurposeRoom will highlight the design patterns I create and comment on others. I will also be using design patterns in my unpublished work, Multiple Paths to the Same Information, that will see some sunlight here. I hope this adds positively to the debates.
Related:
User Interface Design Pattern Library Project at berkley.edu
WebsitePatterns at iawiki.net (Information Architects Wiki)
posted by Ray @ Thursday, July 27, 2006
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posted by Ray @ Thursday, July 27, 2006
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Started reading Interface Culture by Steven Johnson. While reading I wondered how many people know the tv shows? He talked in the recent interview with Jesse James Garrett that he had shopped the proposal for the book in 1994 and it was published nine years ago. The references to modern culture did seem a bit dated, but not the ideas.
The introduction builds on McLuhan’s analysis of extensions of man which is still relevant. Johnson cites McLuhan’s Understanding Media when talking about how the pace of new technologies (extensions) being introduced helps us understand the impact of new technologies. I have been puzzling about this a lot lately in light of the McLuhanisms that “the content of new media is old media” and “does this fish know there’s water?” In other words, does the speedup only help us understand the old media, the new content, and not really help us understand the new media? I think the answer is in McLuhan’s Laws of Media.
The other point that really stood out for me in the introduction was bitmap as a new medium. I work with it everyday and did not really think about it. For me the computer really has two distinct paths from the bits of 0’s and 1’s. The first was the grouping bits into groups of 8 and later 16 to create the code that makes these letters on the screen. ASCII is probably the best known and there are others. This is keyboard computer. The bits are also used to digitize the analog. This is where the bitmap is used to create images and take analog mouse (or pad) input. This also includes sounds and combinations with images or multimedia. This is the bitmap computer. The laptop that most of us use is the hybrid of both. And the web is becoming the storehouse of both characters and these digitization.
I’m not certain how much of Interface Culture I’ll get to in the next few weeks, but I’ll probably go right to the chapter on Links. Beyond the characters and digitization of the analog, I think links are the new technology of the web that is changing our reality. I few years ago I read Albert-Laslo Barabasi’s Linked and found it enlightening. So I’m interested to see what Johnson has to say about Links since he wrote it five years earlier.
posted by Ray @ Tuesday, July 25, 2006
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Ordered a previously owned copy of Interface Culture by Steven Johnson today. He’s the first day keynote speaker at User Experience Week. Adaptive Path has a written interview with Steven Johnson posted to their blog. In order to make the best use of my time at UX there is lots of reading to do.
posted by Ray @ Friday, July 21, 2006
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posted by Ray @ Friday, July 21, 2006
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Design, patterns, experience and innovation.
