Boxes And Arrows : The Design Behind the Design

Article Idea:

Towards a Living Pattern Language for UI Design

suggested by Janne Lammi on 2007/07/10

An article about how to implement a UI design pattern library has already been published on Boxes and Arrows (A Yahoo! Case Study), but it raised some discussion that it is too big project to be carried through in smaller companies which don’t have that much resources available. In my article, I would share my experiences of how to create a pattern library for a small sized organization spending just a few person-weeks. Several good and free CMSs exist which can be quite easily modified to be used as pattern library tools, which make possible a living pattern language whose structure and content gets updated collaboratively by the organization.

Some of the main features of the pattern library I created include:
-Everyone can update patterns, comment on patterns, add examples and coding hints etc.
-Library users can attach keywords to patterns, making the classification of patterns user-developed and dynamic.
-Patterns can be assigned to specific customers or projects, which can increase consistence more than using all the patterns in the library in every project.
-As an extension to the pattern library, a place where users can share their suggestions for new patterns that come up in design and development work, and vote on other people’s ideas, was designed. This forum allows everyone to have a direct say in what patterns should be written next and how the library should be improved.

The story will be more than just describing how to build a tool for sharing and managing patterns; it will presents also the workflow for developing the pattern language further and the ways how to integrate pattern activities into (Agile) software development process.