Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

What if the design system goal was to provide a language for designers and engineers to design for themselves within, rather than provide solutions for designers and engineers to use?

Describing the core of a solution allows it to be used a million ways over without doing it the same way twice.

Different solutions have different confidences, how can we distinguish these? For example, separate this is the solution from this is a solution.

Pajamas is unique and distinct pattern language, and every individual who makes GitLab also has a unique language. Is this tension, beauty, space for expression, something else? Perhaps the key is finding where the language is shared and similar.

Has today’s language of product design become so brutal and so fragmented that most product design no longer has any language — and what we do have is not based on human or natural considerations?

Does modern software lack character because it exists in a modern Metropolis? Do we need a mosaic of subcultures?

Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

Why does design system documentation typically present the foundational small elements first and work up to larger patterns? What would happen if we moved from larger patterns to the smaller — from the ones which create structures to the ones which then embellish those structures, and then to those which embellish the embellishment?

For example, when you teach a child and language you start by identifying whole structures such as house cat then describes some of the details such as window red door, blue collar, and only then move onto foundational elements of the language such as letters, grammar specific terminology.

In Design That Scales the author, Dan Mall, encourages the reader to “Lay out your design systems like a store”`.

Highlighting components first would be like Andy’s Brick Shop putting a bin of heads at the front of the store. It would be an odd signal to send to customers, to communicate that this is just a store where you can find parts instead of a store where you can immerse yourself in universes you love and expand your ability to play to match your imagination. Of course, it is a store where you can find parts, but the context and the opportunity are much larger.

Something I like about this idea is it feels more consumer centred, rather than maintainer optimised.

Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

Architecture talks about indoor space and outdoor space equally.

What’s our equivalent in product design?

Is it on screen and off screen experience?

Perhaps this is service design?

How would we design the edge between the two?

“The volume of the buildings and the volume of the space between the buildings at the same time.”

Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

Scale of the pattern determines the implementation process. Large patterns can only be implemented gradually by grass roots action and policy guidance. Patterns for building can be built in the mind and documented in artefacts. Patterns for construction must be built in place.

Prose and Poetry. In prose, words in a pattern language have a simple single meaning, but in poetry there’s a deeper more profound meaning because of the density, and overlap of the connections. This interlocking illuminates the whole. This compression is the only way to create buildings which are poems.

Each pattern, and pattern type, requires different incentives:

But as far as possible, implementation should be loose and voluntary, based on social responsibility, and not on legislation or coercion.

Each group makes his own decisions about the environment it uses in common. Ideally each group owns the common land at its level and higher groups do not own or control the land belonging to the lower groups. They only own and control the common land that lies between them, and which serves the higher group.

Each level should be self-governing, otherwise they will not be able to solve their own environmental problems. For example, brand govern brand, design system govern design system, feature govern feature.

Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

It makes sense for a design system to invest in the highest business priorities.

But does doing so accelerate the imbalance between higher and under invested areas of a product?

Perhaps even to the point of breaking.

By contrast, a population that is spread more evenly over its region minimises its impact on the ecology and the environment, and finds that it can take care of itself in the land while prudently, with less waste and more humanity.

But perhaps this is not possible because of the higher patterns software exists in, such as capitalism or venture capital.

Broadly speaking, it is only by decentralisation that we can increase self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency is vital if we are to minimise the burden of social systems on the ecosystems that support them.

Some thoughts after reading A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction.

Contribution is a tension between competition of an individual and the cooperation of an interdependent collective. Free-for-all competition replaced (in part) by cooperative mechanisms.

A non-descript mixture of values will tend to produce non-descript people (danmh: or perhaps non-descript design?).
…
Distinct subcultures will only survive as distinct subcultures if they are physically separated in space.

What are the distinct ‘subcultures’ within GitLab (or any other org)? What is the centre of their ‘public life’? What’s in the space between?