Towards a Pattern Language Approach to Document Description

Abstract

Pattern libraries, originating in architecture, are a common way to share design solutions in interaction design and software engineering. Our aim in this paper is to consider patterns as a way of describing commonly-occurring document design solutions to particular problems, from two points of view. First, we are interested in their use as exemplars for designers to follow, and second, we suggest them as a means of understanding linguistic and graphical data for their organization into corpora that will facilitate descriptive work. We discuss the use of patterns across a range of disciplines before suggesting the need to place patterns in the context of genres, with each potentially belonging to a “home genre” in which it originates and to which it makes an implicit intertextual reference intended to produce a particular reader response in the form of a reading strategy or interpretative stance. We consider some conceptual and technical issues involved in the descriptive study of patterns in naturally-occurring documents, including the challenges involved in building a document corpus

An overview of research within the Genre and Multimodality framework

“…The notion of pattern language, coined by the architect Christopher Alexander, advocates the search for functional, pattern-based solutions to specific design problems. Examining the relation between design patterns and genres, Waller et al (2012) note that similar patterns may be found in different genres, which implies the kind of flexibility of movement across the genre space theorised within the GeM framework.…”

“…Extensions of the GeM framework have not been limited to media, but also include theoretical and methodological openings as well. To exemplify, Waller et al (2012) build on the GeM framework and the previous work in Waller (1987) to explore the notion of 'pattern language' in information design. The notion of pattern language, coined by the architect Christopher Alexander, advocates the search for functional, pattern-based solutions to specific design problems.…”

Contracts as Interfaces

“…Inspired by Alexander's initial work, pattern libraries have become a way to share solutions, not only for architects, but also for interaction designers, software engineers, and information designers (e.g., Pan & Stolterman, 2013;Tidwell, 2014;Waller & Delin, 2011). Borrowing tools from these professions seems a natural continuation of the metaphor of contracts as interfaces.…”

Cooperation through clarity

“…Originating in architecture (Alexander et al, 1977), design patterns have become widely used in software engineering and interface design (Tidwell, 1999), and in more recent times, among some information designers (Farkas et al, 2011; Waller et al, 2012). Gerding (2013) proposed a design pattern approach to contract content, and Haapio and Hagan (2016) have proposed a pattern library for contract design.…”