Interaction design patterns - a brief history

Interaction design has its origins in the year 1977 and the renowned architect Christopher Alexander is credited for its formulation and popularization. Patterns and pattern languages for describing patterns are a means to illustrate the best practices, elucidate good designs, and capture experience in a way, such that it is possible for others to reuse the same experience.

In addition to the interaction design, Alexander defined a set of rules, for example, a pattern language in which patterns could be meaningfully combined to produce optimum results. Design patterns are extensively used by software engineers for the actual design process as well as for communicating a design to others. Software patterns became popular after the release of the object-oriented Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software book. After that a pattern community has surfaced that details patterns for all sorts of problem domains: architectural styles, object oriented frameworks, domain models of businesses and interaction patterns.

The first substantial set of interaction design patterns was developed by Jennifer Tidwell and called the Common Ground pattern collection. Many other compilations and languages followed, such as Martijn van Welie's Interaction Design Patterns. Christopher Alexander’s approach to interaction design was first advocated in Norman and Draper's seminal book on user-centred system design. Alexander’s works are quoted in Apple Computer’s Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.

Yahoo! released their internal pattern catalogue to the public for general use, feedback and commentary; this occurred in early 2006. This might indicate a new direction for interaction design pattern development. Several books have been published about User Interface design patterns by renowned authors. A few examples are, A Pattern Approach to Interaction Design, by Jan Borchers, A Pattern Language for Web Usability, by Ian Graham, and Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, by Jennifer Tidwell.