[Sigia-l] storing pattern libraries

[Juan Ruiz]

>When a pattern is updated, all stencils and templates that reference
>that pattern are updated. It's more mechanical than magical, but it
>sounds magical, yeah?

That's exactly what we are looking for. A system where we can document
patterns, and at the same time, these patterns are available for use in
Visio (or other design software).

Therefore, if we need to explain or clarify the concept to
developers/designers, we can always refer to the documentation stored
for the pattern. If we need to create wireframes or prototypes, we can
use the pattern library stencils.

We might end-up creating a customize system; I have not seen a product
were can do this type of integration (yet). Even though, I am evaluating
few tools at the moment.


-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On
Behalf Of Austin Govella
Sent: Thursday, 27 September 2007 9:31 AM
To: sigia l
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] storing pattern libraries

On 9/26/07, Brett Taylor <btaylor at roundarch.com> wrote:
> I agree, but in our libraries, we link to the supporting items so if
we
> show a pattern, we'll have a place to link to the code, visio stencils
> etc.

At Comcast, our IA+Usability group is midway through developing a
system of patterns, stencils, and templates that do something similar.

When a pattern is updated, all stencils and templates that reference
that pattern are updated. It's more mechanical than magical, but it
sounds magical, yeah?

We've developed customized patterns for our products, and we've had
good success using stencils for very rapid wireframing. (Too bad
annotation can't be as fast.)

Our system is targeted first at making it easy for us to document so
we can spend more time thinking and problem solving. We believe the
outcome will be that general "UX literacy" will increase as our common
"UX language" emerges.



(The new system has been spearheaded by Livia Labate, Crystal
Kubitsky, and Paul Kali working with Nathan Curtis and Dan Brown from
Eight Shapes: http://eightshapes.com/. If you would like to know more,
I can put you in touch with someone with more information.)