I have been super busy lately working on the beginnings of a Mobile Pattern Library for a client. This work involves a lot of auditing applications. I am looking at both apps designed by the client and others in the landscape for comparison and for developing best practices across the iPhone, iPad, an Android handset [...]
Interaction design
[Part 7 of a series on Patterns. Working with a Pattern Library.] Patterns, Components, and Code, Oh My! Ok, so now you have a pattern library. Now what? Ultimately, you need to be able to work with this content on a daily basis. The patterns, in and of themselves, give you the tools to understand [...]
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[Part 5 of a series on Patterns. Developing a quality system.] Once you have a collection of patterns they should be reviewed by the team or designated representatives. A review process is good for catching missing issues or considerations as well as refining the problem statement and context of use. Additionally, the review process helps [...]
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[Part 4 of a series on Patterns. How to write patterns once you have identified them.] Writing interaction design patterns can seem easy on the surface. After all, aren’t you just documenting an interaction snippet or module or component? Sort of. It looks easy on the surface, but the actual process of writing the pattern [...]
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[Part 3 of a series on Patterns. Understanding the concept of the reusable solution.] Identifying patterns in architecture The first thing you have to do before you can write an interaction design pattern is to understand how to identify patterns in the wild. When is something a pattern, when is it a principle or a [...]
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[author's note: This is part one in a multi-part series. Based on material I developed with Christian Crumlish and Lucas Pettinati for a workshop we gave at the IA Summit in 2008 and 2009 and at Interactions 2009, I have expanded this information into a multi-day workshop and this series of articles. Once the series [...]
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A few weeks ago, I attended the UX Book club event here in San Francisco. The book in discussion was A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. It was a lively discussion and drifted back and forth between architecture, the Yahoo! Pattern Library, our Social Patterns collection, patterns in interaction design and the motivations behind that [...]
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This past week, we conducted a two day working session with one of our clients. In this working session we created a set of Experience Themes using the method presented by Cindy Chastain at this past year’s IA Summit.
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In Jesse James Garrett’s closing plenary at the IA Summit he challenged us to consider a way to critique our work and to develop a language of critique. Other disciplines, architecture, design, art, theater, even science, have developed and evolved a language by which the field can discern good work versus bad, by which members [...]
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