Design Patterns

I began compiling a list of relevant resources for Interaction Design Patterns and thought I should share it with you. For those who are not sure what I’m talking about, a design pattern is a formal way of documenting a solution to a design problem in a particular field of expertise. The idea was introduced by the architect Christopher Alexander in his brilliant book A Pattern Language, and it has been adapted by many other disciplines, including Computer Science and Interaction Design. Here’s the list of resources:

Interface/Interaction Design Patterns

• Welie - Interaction Design Pattern Library
• UI Patterns - User Interface Design Pattern Library
• Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
• The UI Pattern Factory
• Patterns for Effective Interaction Design (from the book Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell)
  
• UI Design Patterns - Flickr Collection
• Interface Design Patterns - Potsdam University of Applied Sciences
• Open Source UI Design Pattern Library

Information Design Patterns

• Information Design Patterns (by Christian Behrens - Potsdam University of Applied Sciences)
• Visualization Design patterns - Infovis Wiki
• (more needed…)

As Chaomei Chen states on his book Information Visualization “a taxonomy of Information Visualization is needed so that designers can select appropriate techniques to meet given requirements”. This can start with a detailed selection of key design patterns employed in the field. The list compilled by Christian Behrens is a great step in the right direction.