Ryan Singer is one of the amazing designers from 37signals. Here’s a talk on how he uses Christopher Alexander’s work for webdesign but also how it can be applied for any design. Great talk !
Some notes form Ryan Singer talk, “design with forces”
A pattern is a recurring set of forces and a way to resolve them.
Design from scratch
- Draw a boundary between the form and context.
- Identify forces that makes demands on the form
- Resolve related forms into diagrams
- Place the built form into context and look for misfits
A different way of thinking about requirements
- facts about the world instead of attributes (think about what function, not feature)
- Designing with forces means knowing why
- Starting with forces allow us to design from the bottom up and combine forms into larger wholes (find epicenters and aggregate them meaningfully into larger wholes)
- A design is good when it fits the world not when it meets a list of requirements or the latest trends.
Webdesigners should also read his article on his design method
An Introduction to Using Patterns in Web Design
Points:
- List your bits
- Figure out which bits relate to each other
- Prioritize
- Design each chunk
- Put the chunks together
- Make it real
- Test it