ForUSE – Debate: Patterns or Process – Constantine and Lockwood

Debate: Patterns or Process? What works for Usage Centred Design? Lucy Lockwood (process) vs Larry Constantine (patterns).

Patterns are a way to capture the wisdom of many years of design experience. They help to expand and extend the awareness of the experienced designer and aid to save the inexperienced designer. Or are they just a poor, inefficient substitute for well implemented process.

For Patterns Larry Constantine
A pattern is an idea that is useful in one practical context and probably be useful in others. Patterns describe repeated problems along with effective solutions in a standardised useful form. Variations may included name, description of problem, applicability of pattern, solutions, consequences results. Some are just Thou Shalts... or shalt nots.

Welie patterns are some well known and often used patterns. They are a bit "Like, duh" though. Patterns can be from ways to display tables with alternating colours in the rows, to the metaphor of a shopping cart. Good patterns through, capture best practices gained through experience. Patterns describe simple and elegant solutions to problems and capture solutions that have developed and evolved over time. hence they aren't the designs people tend to generate initially,. they reflect untold redesign, as developers have struggled design patterns capture these solutions in a succinct and easily applied form. Design Patterns Addison-Wesley, 1995

Best practice patterns should be Non obvious or even counter intuitive. Broad but specific application. Clearly spell out problem to be solved. Clearly articulate solution and tradeoffs. Exemplify best practices. Basically they are the subtleties within the obvious patterns. The should be based on substantial substantiated patterns.

Against Patterns Lucy Lockwood.
UI design is still at the arts and crafts stage. Early civil engineering and architecture was mostly learned by apprenticeship. They copied what they had seen that worked. Very limited number of 3rd degree wizards. The development of engineering principles and processes allowed for expansion of engineering corps. There is no one size fits all yet, because there just isn't the depth of knowledge to be able to say "This worked here in exactly this situation, so it will work here". Patterns still rely on the '3rd degree wizard' to be able to make best practice. Process allows those who aren't '3rd degree wizards' to work within a framework to achieve best practice.

Practicing designers need help recognising problems and poor design... concrete principles, not cognitive psychology. They need direction for improvements, practical guidance, not canned solutions. There is no such thing as "UI standards". Patterns also only cover 10 - 20% of problems. they are often misapplied. The DO NOT support creativity or innovation.

Who Captures and maintains patterns? A company wants designers to design, not waste time capturing and maintaining patterns and they won't pay for a designer to do this. How do we decide what's a good pattern. It's totally subjective. How do we know that the pattern we have is the best pattern that can be trusted? If a pattern written to be timeless it is too abstract and vague. Description is so general that it doesn't offer specific guidance. Patterns are too tied to current technology and fashion or a particular context.

Where do you find patterns? How do you know which pattern you need? They assume that the designer has analysed the problem well enough to choose a suitable pattern. Patterns can compound a problem that wasn't adequately solved in the inception of the pattern.

[Thought: Competitor analysis is really about gathering patterns...]

Five general rules of usability that patterns are trying to achieve....
Access: make the system usable without help of of instruction.
Efficacy: Don't interfere with those who know it already.
Progression: Facilitate knowledge advancement
Support: Support the real work users are trying to accomplish.
Context: Suit the system to conditions and environment.
Basic Usability principles: Visibility, Feedback, Structure (layout dictated by meaning and use), Reuse (use interface components and behaviors consistently), Tolerance (forgive mistakes), Simplicity.