Pattern languages in HCI: A critical review

This article presents a critical review of patterns and pattern languages in human-computer interaction (HCI). In recent years, patterns and pattern languages have received considerable attention in HCI for their potential as a means for developing and communicating information and knowledge to support good design. This review examines the background to patterns and pattern languages in HCI, and seeks to locate pattern languages in relation to other approaches to interaction design. The review explores four key issues: What is a pattern? What is a pattern language? How are patterns and pattern languages used? and How are values reflected in the pattern-based approach to design? Following on from the review, a future research agenda is proposed for patterns and pattern languages in HCI

Using pattern languages in participatory design

In this paper, we examine the contribution that pattern languages could make to user participation in the design of interactive systems, and we report on our experiences of using pattern languages in this way. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of patterns and pattern languages in the design of interactive systems. Pattern languages were originally developed by the architect, Christopher Alexander, both as a way of understanding the nature of building designs that promote a ‘humane’ or living built environment; and as a practical tool to aid in participatory design of buildings. Our experience suggests that pattern languages do have considerable potential to support participatory design in HCI, but that many pragmatic issues remain to be resolved.</p

Using Pattern Languages in Participatory Design

In this paper, we examine the contribution that pattern languages could make to user participation in the design of interactive systems, and we report on our experiences of using pattern languages in this way. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of patterns and pattern languages in the design of interactive systems. Pattern languages were originally developed by the architect, Christopher Alexander, both as a way of understanding the nature of building designs that promote a ‘humane’ or living built environment; and as a practical tool to aid in participatory design of buildings. Our experience suggests that pattern languages do have considerable potential to support participatory design in HCI, but that many pragmatic issues remain to be resolved

Issues Affecting Security Design Pattern Engineering

Security Design Patterns present the tried and tested design decisions made by security engineers within a well documented format. Patterns allow for complex security concepts, and mechanisms, to be expressed such that non domain experts can make use of them. Our research is concerned with the development of pattern languages for advanced crypto-systems. From our experience developing pattern languages we have encountered several recurring issues within security design pattern engineering. These issues, if not addressed, will affect the adoption of security design patterns. This paper describes these issues and discusses how they could be addressed

Closure properties of pattern languages

Pattern languages are a well-established class of languages, but very little is known about their closure properties. In the present paper we establish a large number of closure properties of the terminal-free pattern languages, and we characterise when the union of two terminal-free pattern languages is again a terminal-free pattern language. We demonstrate that the equivalent question for general pattern languages is characterised differently, and that it is linked to some of the most prominent open problems for pattern languages. We also provide fundamental insights into a well-known construction of E-pattern languages as unions of NE-pattern languages, and vice versa

Pattern languages: Economies of production

Writing under the pseudonym Ivor de Wofle, editor (Architects' Journal and Architectural Review 1927 - 1973) Hubert de Cronin Hastings begins his 1971 book Civilia: the end of sub urban man; a challenge to Semidetsia with an annotation advising town planners to disregard the publication. Aptly titled ‘Stick it’ Wofle suggests the content of the book is better served in the hands of ordinary people in the course of intelligent lay discussion and free from the veil of mystique available only to specialists who make decisions behind closed doors. Proposing the development of a low-rise high-density city built on an area of spoil-tips and quarries in landlocked Warwickshire in England, Civilia describes a future city designed to release citizens caught in an onslaught of hazards to their personal freedom. Wofle pits his ideas for development against the diluted effects of modernism in the 1960s and 70s. Low-cost, systems-based building used as an instrument for creating cheap modern architecture and calculating economically favourable land-use planning had propagated a centrifugal force outwards. Development emerged on the periphery of cities - new towns situated somewhere between escape and participation – lacking the infrastructure of self-sufficiency and economic independence and heralding the birth of the commute, congestion and urban sprawl. Wofle argued this new planning standard was based on an over-simplified and clichéd definition of society crudely borrowed from the economic principle of supply and demand. He determined that architectural and urban development was dominated by patterns of contacts mapping access to goods and services (production and consumption). The supply and demand of which, move individuals through an environment in different directions, placing different pressures on the environment’s available resources. Architect and theorist Christopher Alexander developed his radical theory of planning and building A Pattern Language (1977) on processes that embodied living patterns - relationships between workplace, family, recreation, contemplation etc. Alexander shared Wofle’s belief in the redundancy of the specialized voice, buildings and planning based on patterns requiring the force of law or economic exchange to function were in his view dead and ineffective. Both argued that responding to the organic, contradictory and diverse elements that make up human life better determined effective patterns of settlement. Alexander and Wofle’s utopian projections were underpinned by philosophies of collaboration and empowerment that emerged from modernism. The economic and bureaucratic processes that influence planning and design arguably defeated their ideals. A planning policy has emerged simplifying patterns of human settlement into categories of economically motivated behaviour. To what extent do the values of growth and progress take precedence over the human experience of inhabiting space? In order to preserve a way of life, do we now require utopian visions of contemporary cities and societies to remain passive as symbols and memorials of hope and change

Closure properties of pattern languages

Pattern languages are a well-established class of languages that is particularly popular in algorithmic learning theory, but very little is known about their closure properties. In the present paper we establish a large number of closure properties of the terminal-free pattern languages, and we characterise when the union of two terminal-free pattern languages is again a terminal-free pattern language. We demonstrate that the equivalent question for general pattern languages is characterised differently, and that it is linked to some of the most prominent open problems for pattern languages. We also provide fundamental insights into a well-known construction of E-pattern languages as unions of NE-pattern languages, and vice versa. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland