Patterns or claims: do they help in communicating design advice?

  • Authors:
  • George Abraham;Michael E. Atwood

  • Affiliations:
  • Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA;Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

  • Venue:
  • OZCHI '09 Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Past research asserts that patterns or claims will help capture and communicate interaction-design advice. Both structures attempt to provide advice in context along with the justifications for fit. These properties aim to make patterns or claims more concrete and comprehensible to novice designers than design guidelines. However, empirical work evaluating these promises is lacking. This research presents a controlled study that examines the value of structuring design advice as patterns or as claims. Patterns and claims seem different given their respective roots in architecture and design rationale. They also differ in their emphasis when capturing design decisions; patterns emphasize capturing a problem-solution pair in a certain context, whereas claims focus on capturing the positive and negative implications to a design decision. The findings from the study suggest it may be promising to combine the claim and pattern structures and that such a structure may facilitate discussions of design trade-offs.