The notion of patterns and practices is fairly developed in the software engineering field. The idea of formalized software dev patterns originates from Christopher Alexander's series of books on the same subject applied to physical architecture. Back quite a while ago now, some folks saw the applicability to software and began popularizing the idea through books like software *Design Patterns*, *Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture *, etc.
It's worth noting that "patterns" here has a specialized sense based on Alexander's view. The general idea is that a pattern is a *common *(not innovative) way to build something to address a particular set of problems in a particular context with the ultimate goal of building something that is *alive* and *whole*, as Alexander put it in his *Timeless Way of Building*. This is, to varying degrees, what you'll see in things like Yahoo's library, as well as welie.com, Tidwell's *Designing Interfaces*, ui-patterns.com, et al. In addition to being a source of inspiration and general reference, patterns can also facilitate high-level design discussion. As in philosophy, the names of patterns can be used as short-hand jargon to reference complex ideas and help folks come to a solution faster via a body of knowledge expressed through shared language. I'm curious as to how UX pros use patterns. I realize there is a fair bit (more) pride in being creative/original in the design space than in engineering, but I think the general idea of using patterns to inform design and provide good constraints is a good thing. As for best practices, I see those as more granular than, say, "do ethnographical research." I'd say it would be particular ways, techniques, methodologies that have been shown to generally produce good results. But they are more focused on *how* you do things rather than the end result, which is I think more the focus of patterns. It's not, as I see it, an either-or (either patterns or practices) but a both-and. They're both resources on which designers can draw to help inform their work. --Ambrose ________________________________________________________________ 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
