Do We Practise What We Preach in Formulating Our Design and Development Methods?

It is important, for our credibility as user interface designers and educators, that we practice what we preach. Many system designers and programmers remain sceptical about the need for user-centred design. To win them over, we need to be absolutely clear about what they need to do. We, as a community, propose many different methods to support naive designers so that they will design and implement user-centred systems. One of the most popular methods is HCI design patterns --- captured and formulated by experts for the sole purpose of transferring knowledge to novices. In this paper we investigate the usability of these patterns, using both theoretical and experimental analysis, and conclude that they are not usable. Hence, unfortunately, we have to conclude that we don't practice what we preach. We conclude the paper by making some suggestions about how we can address this situation.

[1]  Marcia C. Linn,et al.  Patterns and pedagogy , 1999, SIGCSE '99.

[2]  Elliot Soloway,et al.  Learning to program = learning to construct mechanisms and explanations , 1986, CACM.

[3]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Chapter 4 – The Usability Engineering Lifecycle , 1993 .

[4]  Taylor L. Booth,et al.  Computer Education , 1984, Computer.

[5]  Andy Dearden,et al.  Patterns , Anti-Patterns and Guidelines – Effective Aids to Teaching HCI Principles ? , 2006 .

[6]  Andrew M. Dearden,et al.  Pattern Languages in HCI: A Critical Review , 2006, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[7]  Philip N. Johnson-Laird,et al.  Mental Models in Cognitive Science , 1980, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  Stephen R. Schach,et al.  Object-oriented and classical software engineering , 1995 .

[9]  Marcia C. Linn,et al.  How Can Hypermedia Tools Help Teach Programming , 1992 .

[10]  Christian Lebiere,et al.  Implicit and explicit learning in ACT-R , 1998 .

[11]  Janet Wesson,et al.  An Experiment to Measure the Usefulness of Patterns in the Interaction Design Process , 2005, INTERACT.

[12]  H. Rex Hartson,et al.  Toward Empirically Derived Methodologies and Tools for Human-Computer Interface Development , 1989, Int. J. Man Mach. Stud..

[13]  Paula Kotzé,et al.  The use of anti-patterns in human computer interaction: wise or III-advised? , 2004 .

[14]  Fabio Paternò,et al.  Human-Computer Interaction - INTERACT 2005 , 2005, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[15]  Jr. Frederick P. Brooks,et al.  The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Softw , 1978 .

[16]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Usability engineering , 1997, The Computer Science and Engineering Handbook.

[17]  Ralph Johnson,et al.  design patterns elements of reusable object oriented software , 2019 .

[18]  M W Kirkhart.  The Nature of Declarative and Nondeclarative Knowledge for Implicit and Explicit Learning , 2001, The Journal of general psychology.

[19]  Michael E. Gorman,et al.  Types of Knowledge and Their Roles in Technology Transfer , 2002 .

[20]  G. Miller.  The assessment of clinical skills/competence/performance , 1990, Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

[21]  P. Johnson-Laird.  Mental models , 1989 .

[22]  M. Posner.  Foundations of cognitive science , 1989 .

[23]  Barry Jones,et al.  How Language Works , 1985 .

[24]  Austin Henderson,et al.  Interaction design: beyond human-computer interaction , 2002, UBIQ.

[25]  K. J. Craik,et al.  The nature of explanation , 1944 .

[26]  Stuart Davis,et al.  How language works , 2009 .

[27]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  Human-Computer Interaction, third edition , 2004 .

[28]  Alexandra Poulovassilis,et al.  Classical and Object-Oriented Software Engineering with UML and C++, Stephen R. Schach, McGraw-Hill, 1998 (Book Review) , 2000, Softw. Test. Verification Reliab..

[29]  Jenifer Tidwell.  Designing Interfaces , 2005 .

[30]  Herbert H. Clark,et al.  On the process of comparing sentences against pictures , 1972 .

[31]  N. Taatgen.  Learning without limits: from problem solving towards a Unified Theory of Learning , 1999 .

[32]  Deborah J. Mayhew,et al.  The usability engineering lifecycle , 1999, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[33]  Lydia Michelle Mann.  The implications of functional and structural knowledge representations for novice programmers , 1992 .

[34]  R. Dekeyser.  Implicit and Explicit Learning , 2008 .

[35]  Douglas C. Schmidt,et al.  Software patterns , 1996, CACM.

[36]  M. Polanyi.  Personal Knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy , 1959 .

[37]  E. Burnstein,et al.  “I am not guilty” vs “I am innocent”: Successful negation may depend on the schema used for its encoding☆ , 2004 .

[38]  Sally Fincher.  Why patterns are not enough : some suggestions concerning an organising principle for patterns of UI design , 2000 .

[39]  D. Berry.  How implicit is implicit learning , 1997 .

[40]  Rebecca E. Grinter,et al.  Putting it all together: towards a pattern language for interaction design: A CHI 97 workshop , 1998, SGCH.

[41]  John R. Anderson,et al.  Rules of the Mind , 1993 .

[42]  Deborah J. Mayhew,et al.  Principles and Guidelines in Software User Interface Design , 1991 .

[43]  Jenifer Tidwell,et al.  Designing interfaces - patterns for effective interaction design , 2019 .

[44]  O. Coplien,et al.  Software Patterns , 1996 .

[45]  Marcia C. Linn,et al.  The case for case studies of programming problems , 1992, CACM.

[46]  Thomas J. Mowbray,et al.  AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis , 1998 .

[47]  Sidney L. Smith,et al.  Guidelines for Designing User Interface Software , 1986 .

[48]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Designing The User Interface , 2013 .

[49]  Stanford University borchers,et al.  Teaching HCI Design Patterns : Experience From Two University Courses , 2002 .

[50]  W. Buxton.  Human-Computer Interaction , 1988, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[51]  Marcia C. Linn,et al.  Supporting Pascal Programming with an On-Line Template Library and Case Studies , 1993, Int. J. Man Mach. Stud..

[52]  Gerrit C. van der Veer,et al.  Pattern Languages in Interaction Design: Structure and Organization , 2003 .

[53]  Y. Rogers,et al.  Interaction Design , 2002 .

[54]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  Human-Computer Interaction (3rd Edition) , 2003 .

[55]  L. J. Johnston,et al.  Principles for a usability-oriented pattern language , 1998, Proceedings 1998 Australasian Computer Human Interaction Conference. OzCHI'98 (Cat. No.98EX234).

[56]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Heuristic Evaluation of Prototypes (individual) , 2022 .

[57]  Patrick S. Malone,et al.  Unbelieving the Unbelievable: Some problems in the rejection of false information , 1990 .

[58]  Helge S. Kragh.  An introduction to the historiography of science: Structure and organization , 1987 .

[59]  Jakob Nielsen,et al.  Usability inspection methods , 1994, CHI 95 Conference Companion.

[60]  A. Reber.  Implicit learning and tacit knowledge , 1993 .

[61]  J. Shatzer,et al.  For Personal Use Only. Reproduce with Permission from the Lancet Publishing Group. Standard Setting Assessment of Clinical Competence Medical Education Quartet , 2022 .

[62]  Ahmed Seffah.  Learning the ropes: human-centered design skills and patterns for software engineers' education , 2003, INTR.

[63]  Romin W. Tafarodi,et al.  You can't not believe everything you read. , 1993, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[64]  Paula Kotzé,et al.  Don't do this - Pitfalls in using anti-patterns in teaching human-computer interaction principles , 2008, Comput. Educ..

[65]  Dennis Wixon,et al.  Book review: PRINCIPLES AND GUIDELINES IN SOFTWARE USER INTERFACE DESIGN by Deborah J . Mayhew (Prentice Hall, 1992) , 1993, SGCH.

[66]  Colin Potts,et al.  Design of Everyday Things , 1988 .