> Just passing this along for reference. I'm not affiliated with the site, > but > I like what I've seen so far–especially the clean, simple design of the > site > itself. > http://ui-patterns.com/
The initiative is great, but there are obviously a few problems. 1) There is no navigation on the site - you always need to return to the homepage to find new patterns. It's not very scalable. 2) The pattern descriptions could benefit from some more detail. Jared Spool has a great write-up on the elements of a good pattern description here<http://www.uie.com/articles/elements_of_a_design_pattern/>. More thorough descriptions could help convince the interaction design community to promote it as a good resource. 3) One thing not even Spool mentions is that a pattern description can always benefit from a summary of possible benefits and caveats in terms of usability. For example, your description of "Continuous scrolling" could mention (based on usability studies, of course) that this pattern can cause confusion for users, who often believe that a page with continuous scrolling simply has not finished loading. As in, they often don't recognize that the scrolling is done that way on purpose—they think the page hasn't completed loading. As such, they keep clicking on the down arrow of the scrollbar in a repeatedly failing attempt to "reach the end". Some discussion of the usability of each pattern would be incredibly beneficial to anyone considering the use of a given pattern. 4) Some of the patterns are more commonly known by other names, and these names should be mentioned for the sake of completeness. "Continuous scrolling", for example, is often known as "Infinite scrolling", and "Tip a friend" is often known as "Tell a friend". 5) I noticed there is no way to contact the guy who created the site (unless you go through his blog to his personal About page and copy/paste/modify his email address). I wonder if he has plans to open up the site so that others can contribute (wiki-style), or at least to offer a feedback form for each pattern description. (FWIW, I emailed this list to the guy who created the site.) -r- ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
