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.

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.