I’ve mentioned before that I plan to write my grad capstone on usability-supporting architectural patterns. When I heard that UPA’s conference this year was focussed on patterns, I asked a colleague that was attending if I could get her notes. When she got back to work, she lent me a copy of Jenifer Tidwell’s “Designing Interfaces“. She had seen Jenifer speak and evidently there was a fair amount of mention of this book. Unfortunately, the day my colleague lent me the book, I put in my two weeks notice at work, so I needed to look through it quickly!

The book itself is interesting, but it is not quite what I was looking for. These are patterns specifically dealing with Interface design. Useful within a given group, but it is at a lower level than I want to focus on. That being said, I think it will be good to use to contrast with my true area of interst.

This also brings up another issue: the reason why I selected my topic for my capstone was because I had come across several articles written from an architectural or programmatic standpoint that spoke of a lack of a pattern language that could be used to describe usability problems. It seems to me that the patterns in this book do not manage to bridge this gap between the disciplines. However, I may be saying this with bias from my experience. We were fortunate enough to be provided with detailed UI specifications, as well as visual design mockups and wireframes. It is possible that this pattern language could have streamlined some of this.

Even the description of patterns in the preface is slightly different than what I am accustomed to:

“In essence, patterns are structural and behavioral best practices with a given design domain. .They capture common solutions to design tensions (usually called “forces” in pattern literature and thus, by definition, are not novel.) …. This book describes patterns literally as solutions to design problesm because part of their value lies in the way they resolve tensions in various design contexts.”

I am not sure about this notion of ‘habitability’… I suppose from the standpoint of the designer, this makes sense. Rather than recreating the wheel time and again, a given pattern can be used to describe the problem space. I suppose I see it moreso as a way to categorize, not ‘understand’. I don’t know that a given pattern makes a problem more clear, rather, it simply offers up a method to deal with them.
The notion of resolving tensions is interesting, however. Perhaps using patterns forces the designer to make choices that otherwise may not have been evident.

The book contrasts the difference between websites and web applications — as dealing with nouns versus verbs.

The book does break up patterns according to the domain — there are patterns dealing with physical structure (two-panel selector, one-window drilldown),navigation (global navigation, hub and spoke) with comments on which combinations work well together.

There is some discussion on alternative presentational methods (mobile phones), which is refreshing. This changes the model dramatically but is not considered often enough. If we design interfaces to be intuitive for the user, how does the different platform still support this? Browsing via a mobile device often allows for two main navigation keys. Is this something we can (or should) mimic on a traditional webpage?