This paper explores a way of applying the emerging idea of pattern based design to creation of usable interactive systems. It defines patterns based on traditional usability attributes . Copyright on this material is held by the authors. An important factor in improving design quality for interactive systems is our effectiveness in capturing and communicating the essential elements of good designs.
Many fields use patterns under various names.
The important advance needed to move from exemplars and templates to patterns seems to be a vocabulary that is specific to design for usability, simple enough to learn, and with a broad enough range of application. A pattern language is a collection of patterns that can solve all the problems in a particular domain. They will always need to be interpreted for any development project. To begin combing this limited vocabulary into sentences, we rate the importance of each. For this paper we rate each as high, medium, or low, although more fine-grained numeric scales are also effective.