Patterns and Pattern Sites in HCI: An Analysis

Interest in patterns and pattern languages in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) continues. However, many of the questions and concerns in this area have yet to be addressed. These questions and concerns include lack of empirical evidence to support the claimed benefits, lack of a standard pattern format, and lack of an organizing principle. This paper describes an analysis of the design of pattern websites and their respective patterns. A systematic online search using multiple search engines and multiple search phrases was conducted in attempt to further understand the current state of affairs, including pattern format and organizing principles. The results suggest that the community has yet to adopt a standard pattern format. Although, the essence of Alexander’s patterns was found in most patterns. The findings highlight the progress that we, as a community, have made in some areas, but remind us that there is work to do in other areas

Exploring Design Patterns as Evaluation Tools in Human Computer Interaction Education

In Human Computer Interaction (HCI), interest in design patterns and pattern languages has continued for decades. There are many potential benefits of design patterns and pattern languages described in the literature including reuse of quality solutions, providing a lingua franca, and their application as both design and evaluation tools. However, there is still a lack of empirical evidence in this area. Many of the questions and concerns raised in this area have yet to be addressed. Dearden and Finlay in their 2006 critical review provide an agenda that includes exploring appropriate ways to use pattern languages in education and design. This work explores the use of design patterns in HCI education and the use of design patterns as evaluation tools. The results of this exploration suggest that design patterns may be an effective tool to educate novice designers and design patterns may useful in evaluating designs

How To Transfer Tacit Knowledge for Living Lab Practice:Consideration on Tacit Knowledge Representations

Despite strong attention and wide ranges of practice, living labs have hardly scaled up for a decade as expected. For living labs as one of the innovative methods for social challenges in cities with high complexity and uncertainty, one of the critical challenges is in knowledge transfer of its practice. Practical tacit knowledge for living lab is often embedded within process, organization and operation, and hardly externalized. The inexperienced practitioners face a lot of uncertainty in implementation of living lab without clues where to tackle. Aiming at promoting the living lab practice widely, this paper investigates tacit knowledge externalization with three different representations. The analysis and comparison of external representations indicate a strong compatibility pattern between representation styles and practitioners’ maturity level on the relevant field. In the living lab practice, how to convey tacti knowledge should be considered carefully, depending on practitioners’ maturity level

Everyone’s Committed: Evaluating Accessibility Statements Across Design Systems

While most organizations keep their accessibility guidelines private, many digital design systems are public. This allows researchers to study and compare how different systems situate and discuss accessibility. Through a content analysis of over 90 design systems, four different categories of accessibility value statements were identified: framing, modes of address, responsibilities, and commitments. Using critical discourse analysis, each category was assessed through the lens of value sensitive design, an approach focused on how the design process can better identify and debate key values such as ethics, human rights, and inclusion. The four categories constructed were framing—statements inspired by universal design that included the word “everyone”; modes of address—statements containing the phrase “we believe”; responsibilities—statements that referred to employees of the host organization; and commitments, which contained a mix of ambiguous and unambiguous value statements. The findings indicate that accessibility responsibilities and commitments are more likely to be successful when value statements contain clear language and specific associated actions. Related to this, accessibility value statements would benefit from a shift away from universal design and towards inclusive design to better identify and minimize the unintended consequences of exclusion. Finally, this research suggests that many accessibility statements reflect core aspects of value sensitive design without making direct reference to the approach, indicating potential overlap

A Pattern Approach to Examine the Design Space of Spatiotemporal Visualization

Pattern language has been widely used in the development of visualization systems. This dissertation applies a pattern language approach to explore the design space of spatiotemporal visualization. The study provides a framework for both designers and novices to communicate, develop, evaluate, and share spatiotemporal visualization design on an abstract level. The touchstone of the work is a pattern language consisting of fifteen design patterns and four categories. In order to validate the design patterns, the researcher created two visualization systems with this framework in mind. The first system displayed the daily routine of human beings via a polygon-based visualization. The second system showed the spatiotemporal patterns of co-occurring hashtags with a spiral map, sunburst diagram, and small multiples. The evaluation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed design patterns to guide design thinking and create novel visualization practices

Examining the impact of an information retrieval pattern language on the design of information retrieval interfaces

For more than two decades much of the pattern language literature, within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), has focused on the possible benefits pattern languages may provide, but there has been very little empirical work to support these claims. It has been suggested that interaction patterns or pattern languages in HCI may address some of the problems inherent in designing interactive systems by supporting reuse, capturing design knowledge, enabling the sharing of design knowledge, and facilitating communication among designers and users. This study examined the impact of a pattern language on the design of information retrieval interfaces, in terms of the quality of the interfaces and the time to design the interfaces. Participants created paper and pencil interfaces based on the given design task. Participants were exposed to either a pattern language, guidelines, or no structuring technique. There were no statistically significant differences between the three groups in terms of the quality of the interfaces and time to design the interfaces.The results of this study suggest that the value of pattern languages in HCI may not be in reuse, at the early stages of design, or in terms of the quality of the resulting designs, in domains familiar to designers. Although there was no apparent impact of the pattern language on the early stage designs, the results of a follow-up study suggest there is a significant correlation between the existence of patterns in commercial systems and the overall usability of those systems. Therefore, we suggest that we, as a community, very closely examine the current state of pattern languages in HCI before continuing to move forward. As a community, we need to shift our focus away from discussing the possible benefits of pattern languages and trying to build pattern collections. And instead, focus on trying to fully understand the value of pattern languages in HCI. In doing so, the HCI community, will then begin to see the benefits from all the great efforts in this area.Ph.D., Information Studies -- Drexel University, 200

SQL pattern design, development & evaluation of its efficacy

Databases provide the foundation of most software systems. This means that system developers will inevitably need to write code to query these databases. The de facto language for querying is SQL and this, consequently, is the language primarily taught by higher education institutions. There is some evidence that learners find it hard to master SQL. These issues and concerns were confirmed by reviewing the literature and establishing the scope and context. The literature review allowed extraction of the common issues in impacting SQL acquisition. The identified issues were confirmed and justified by empirical evidence as reported here. A model of SQL learning was derived. This framework or model involves SQL learning taxonomy, a model of SQL problem solving and incorporates cross-cutting factors. The framework is used as map to the design of a proposed instructional design. The design employed pattern concepts and the related research to structure SQL knowledge as SQL patterns. Also presented are details on how SQL patterns could be organized and presented. A strong theoretical background (checklist, component-level design) was employed to organize, present and facilitated SQL pattern collection. The evaluation of the SQL patterns yielded new insight such as novice problem solving strategies and the types of errors students made in attempting to solve SQL problems. SQL patterns, as proposed as a result of this research, yielded statistically significant important in novice performance in writing SQL queries. A longitudinal field study with a large number of learners in a flexible environment should be conducted to confirm the findings of this research