The Nielsen Group announced the User Experience 2005 Conference, which will run the same program simultaniously in Boston and London. One of the more interesting of the listed topics is How design patterns can increase usability.
Regarding my ventures with core, this is particularly interesting. In 1998, when I started out developing for the web, I studied and utilized modular elements for information architecture and design. Getting more involved in usability and the user experience, I began to understand that these design patterns not only help the developers of a website by eliminating redundant work, they are also useful to users of websites, because in the end, it is patterns on which humans rely on, as defined in cognitive science. Today, pattern modules are a core element of web creation with usability in mind. The Nielsen Group described their feature on the User Experience 2005 Conference this way:
Experienced interface designers depend upon a vast repository of knowledge about “what works” in a given situation. Design patterns, then, allow such knowledge to be captured in a standardized form, making it more accessible to new team members, less-experienced designers, or non-specialists such as writers, marketers, or managers. Individual design patterns are also collected into pattern languages—structural and conceptual frameworks that organize and link related patterns—to help designers generate high quality solutions.
Resources
User Experience 2005 Conference
The Nielsen Group
Wikipedia: Modularity in Cognitive Science
Wikipedia: Design Patterns
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