INTRODUCTION

The idea of patterns originated from Christopher Alexander’s work (1), (2) in urban architecture, although similar formats to document successful design and engineering solutions emerged among the renaissance “master builders� of the fifteenth century (5). They espouse an approach to design – codified in the patterns – that focuses on the interactions between the physical form of buildings and the way in which that form inhibits or facilitates various personal and social behaviour. An interconnected set of patterns is called a pattern language. Patterns of a pattern language are intended to be used together in a specific problem domain.

Software engineering adopted the format in the late eighties, leading to the general acceptance of software patterns as a very useful form of documenting successful software engineering solutions (see e.g. (8) ).

However, the idea of end users designing their own (software) architectures has not been taken over. Looking at the closeness of HCI and architecture, it seems almost surprising that software engineering, not HCI, adopted the patterns concept so quickly and widely. On the other hand, early references in key HCI texts such as (10) indicate that there has long been an interest in this link, although it did not emerge widely until the late 90’s (3). Since then the topic has featured at numerous workshops at CHI and elsewhere in the HCI community.

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... about the role of PLML at CHI2004.
... download a PDF-Version of the full workshop description (cache).
... look up the References for CHI2004

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