My notes on the aforementioned The Origins of Pattern Theory: The Future of the Theory, and the Generation of a Living World:
- Coplien says in the intro, “Focusing on objects had caused us to lose the
system perspective. Preoccupation with design
method had caused us to lose the human perspective.”
- Alexander wrote the introduction to Richard
Gabriel’s book “Patterns of Software.”
- Alexander on the philosophy behind his work: “All of my life I’ve spent trying to learn how to
produce living structure in the world. That means
towns, streets, buildings, rooms, gardens, places
which are themselves living or alive…This
living structure which is needed to sustain us and
nurture us and which did exist to some degree in
the traditional societies and in rural communities
and in early urban settlements has disappeared…We don’t know how to create it
or generate it any more.”
- Interesting to think about the application of this idea to HCI design.
- Interesting to think about the application of this idea to HCI design.
- His intention with A Pattern Language was “first of all, of course, intended just to get
a handle on some of the physical structures that make
the environment nurturing for human beings. And,
secondly, it was done in a way that would allow this to
happen on a really large scale. And, what I mean by that
is that we wanted to generate the environment indirectly,
just as biological organisms are generated, indirectly,
by a genetic code.”
- Which makes me wonder if my top-down approach contradicts his approach. It it just the creation of the language that is genetically generated or also the use of the language?
- Which makes me wonder if my top-down approach contradicts his approach. It it just the creation of the language that is genetically generated or also the use of the language?
- He points out the success of communities that were designed by the inhabitants, citing their familiarity with the environment and their use to be vital design input. This has significant implications for participatory HCI design.
- He cites three goals of pattern languages: “First, it has a moral component. Second, it has the aim of creating coherence, morphological coherence
in the things which are made with it. And
third, it is generative: it allows people to create coherence,
morally sound objects, and encourages
and enables this process because of its emphasis on
the coherence of the created whole.”
- I think the moral aspect is implicit in HCI design – that we’re trying to design artifacts that improve how we interact with computers. But perhaps it’s not implicit for other designers, just as it’s not implicit with all architects. This aspect should be stated in the design pattern.
- My use, more than anything, lacks the ability to create coherence. Once HCI design patterns are selected for a task/project, how can they be used together to create a coherent whole? Can the pattern language itself accomplish this, or the process of using it, or is this reliant upon a skilled designer’s intuition? Perhaps this is what the Nature of Order addresses. Perhaps the 15 properties of the Nature of Order should be used to judge the design, much like Nielson’s Heuristics or Razorfish’s Heuristics.
- I think the moral aspect is implicit in HCI design – that we’re trying to design artifacts that improve how we interact with computers. But perhaps it’s not implicit for other designers, just as it’s not implicit with all architects. This aspect should be stated in the design pattern.
- Alexander says, “By the late ’70s, I
had begun to see many buildings that were being
made in the world when the patterns were applied.
I was not happy with what I saw. It seemed to me
that we had fallen far short of the mark that I had
intended. But, I also realized that whatever was
going wrong wasn’t going to be corrected by writing
a few more patterns or making the patterns a little
bit better.” - This leads to a need for a more rigorous approach to judging whether a structure has life or not, hence the 15 properties. The properties are an attempt at objective measures of a structure’s living qualities, or wholeness. (He rebutes those who say this is too subjective by saying the effects of a design on the people who use it can be measured, so we can’t hide behind artistic impression when it comes to design.)
- This makes me more confident of the applicability of the heuristics mentioned above.
- This makes me more confident of the applicability of the heuristics mentioned above.
- He says you can compare designs by asking people, “Do you feel more
whole? Do you feel more alive in the presence of this
thing? Do you feel that this one is more of a picture
of your own true self than this thing you know whatever?”
- More lamenting, worth noting: “whatever feeling
there is in here is obviously not a profound positive
feeling. And this is what we have come to expect
in our modern world. The failure of that
profound feeling to exist in the world around us at
small scales, large scales, middle scales, here, there, and everywhere, is tragic. It’s the thing that we miss.”
- He talks about a process involving “unfolding wholeness.” You begin with a structure in a certain state and perform “structure-preserving transformations, maintaining the whole
at each step, but gradually introducing differentiations one after the other.” This mirrors what happens in nature.
- This seems to support my top-down approach, expecially as I determine the overall posture of the interface first. I should check (and test) my order to see if it supports this sort of unfolding wholeness.
- This seems to support my top-down approach, expecially as I determine the overall posture of the interface first. I should check (and test) my order to see if it supports this sort of unfolding wholeness.
- Why this is needed in HCI design: “The process of design
that we currently recognize as normal is one where
the architect or somebody else is sort of moving stuff
around, trying to get into some kind of good configuration.
Effectively this means searching in an almost
random way in configuration space, and never
homing in on the good structure.”
- He addresses the practical difficulty of all this: “The social and technical shifts involved are
large. The shifts in thought, in practice, in administration
of money, in contracts, all sorts of real nitty-gritty
things that one would much rather not mess
with because they are so hard, you must mess with
because it is those processes which are undermining
the ability for our whole contemporary social
process to be structure-preserving unfolding. If life
is to be created, these processes must change.”
- There is an enormous amount of livable space in the world, and most of it is filled with lifeless design. A genetic approach, like the way human genetic code generates a body, could help spread these ideas and processes over this space. But spreading via culture influence, i.e. Alexander’s books, isn’t happening nearly fast enough. Instead, transferring these ideas to the realm of software could have greater influence. So much is coming under the influence or control of software, using software to further these concepts can go much further much faster. Architects and others in the building profession should control their future, but they’re not taking responsibility for it. So instead the torch could be passed to the software professionals.
- The pattern language books said the design patterns were meant to be used sequentially, but this didn’t happen in use. His new pattern languages are generative, offering sequences of instructions that let people build entire buildings. These new patterns are dynamic, and interact with context.
- Wow! Can’t wait to see what those look like.
- Wow! Can’t wait to see what those look like.