I do think that patterns bring benefits in learnability and consistency to the user’s experience (as well as demonstrable benefits for developers, and beyond that for software, as I outline in the article linked above). But I also think patterns emerge from use and behavior, and are adaptive. You don’t enforce patterns on users, rather you identify emergent behavioral patterns and then use a design patterns approach to formalize these.

The idea is that cowpaths emerge, and we pave them. The thing about cowpaths is, you don’t know where they’ll be until the cows start a walking. Well, I don’t think you can know them. This methodology is predicated on the belief that you can.

Its seems that this methodology assumes that all cowpaths will emerge in the same locations, we just have to know where it is.
From what we know about emergent systems, (and human behavior is a classic emergent system) this is unlikely.

As to the assertion “Humans are essentially the same in how they do things”, I guess

0. it is superficially appealing (see everyone starts ordered lists at 1 right :-)
1. it is at best highly contentious
2. it would only be demonstrable by watching users and identifying their behavior – um, that sounds a bit user centered doesn’t it?

I know it is a precis but if the following is accurate, there is another, deeply philosophical and far more important issue lurking beneath the apparently methodological one here.

“Craig argued that current methodologies focus on the users too much, and that consequently, the business objectives are often not given the level of attention they require”

User centered design is a philosophical choice. Yes, it is predicated in part on the belief that by solving the problem the user wants to solve, the provider will somehow benefit from providing that solution.
The alternative is really to treat users as some part of the business process – business process centered design. Sounds a fair bit like a Soviet approach (and I mean that in a non rhetorical way).
And this is predicated on a philosophy of business which says in business, my needs and outcomes as the business are paramount, and those of my customers are subordinate.

Personally, it’s not how I do business, nor how I like to be treated. But aboveall, I wonder which philosophy will win in the coming decade or so.

OK, strayed way too far off the topic,

john

I don’t know if you have come across http://webpatterns.org. It’s your utopian dream in action (and Aussie based, though of course global via the internets)

Actually, it may not be quite as utopian as you think. Afterall, it’s really in many ways just an extension of developing standards like HTML and CSS (which a decade ago looke d like a utopian vision, trust me!)

I’ll asnwer more in detail to the issue at hand shortly

john

Meliss: Good points. What do you think of using patterns? Do you think think this will help maintain an appropriate focus on business goals?

Craig’s arguments remind me of all the “silver bullet” approaches that have emerged over the years in software engineering. That field has also had its share of people claiming that, by following a given process, any programmer or system designer could come up with The One Best Solution to a given problem. Perhaps it’s time for someone to write the equivalent of Fred Brooks’ Mythical Man-Month for UX…