Anders Toxboe has set up an online user interface patterns library. It's a personal project but "extremely open to contributions."

Links:

• UI-Patterns.com 

Henrik Olsen - February 03, 2008

Luke Wroblewski has published a series of articles discussing design patterns.

Here are few quotes from the articles:

"Design patterns describe solutions. Solutions that we know can work 'positively' for specific problems in specific contexts."

"When many different design teams work on a single large product of a suite of products, consistency is important. Everyone needs to know the same "design language"."

"They provide a way for people to talk about the concept and a way to recognize the solution when a similar problem context arises in the future."

"...one learns the language, works in it until it becomes second nature, and eventually figures out how to transcend it to do truly original work."

"I use patterns partly because they fulfill users' expectations for layout and behavior; if we try to be so original that we go far beyond those expectations, we risk a total failure to communicate with our users."

Links:

• Design Patterns 

Henrik Olsen - June 03, 2006

Jenifer Tidwell has published a book stuffed with interface design patterns. Each pattern contains practical design advice and examples from desktop applications, web sites, web applications and mobile devices. The idea behind the book is that there are lots of good ideas out there waiting to be reused.

Each chapter in the book explains key concepts in interaction design and visual design. The topics include:
- Information architecture for applications
- Navigation
- Page layout
- Maps, graphs, and tables
- Forms
- Graphic editors
- Color, typography, and look-and-feel

At the book's companion website you'll find excerpts of some the patterns in her book.

Links:

• Companion web-site 
• Review of the book by Mario Georgiou 
• The book at Amazon.com 
• The book at Amazon.co.uk 

Henrik Olsen - April 05, 2006

See also: Books (47) 

Yahoo! has decided to share their Design Pattern Library with the rest of us. You can find inspiration for common design elements such as breadcrumbs, auto completion, pagination - and more to come.

Links:

• Yahoo! Design Pattern Library 

Henrik Olsen - February 14, 2006 - via IA? EH

Design patterns have become a popular method for teams to tame the consistent-design-management tiger. UIE have looked at how teams build and maintain design pattern libraries and what they punt into their design pattern description. The result is great inspiration for building your own design patterns.

Links:

• The Elements of a Design Pattern 

Henrik Olsen - January 24, 2006

Jenifer Tidwell has created a collection of design patterns for websites, desktop application, "and everything in between."

"They're common problems, and there's no point in reinventing the wheel every time you need, say, a sortable table -- plenty of folks have already done it, and learned how to do it well. Some of that knowledge is written up here, in an easily-digestible format."

"If you're running short on ideas, or hung up on a difficult design quandary, read over these and see if any of them are applicable."

Links:

• UI Patterns and Techniques 

Henrik Olsen - May 27, 2005 - via Column Two

See also: Tools (105) 

Ever envied those programmers and their big fat reference books, from which they can get instant answers to all their problems. Envy no more. Douglas van Dyne, James Landay, and Jason Hong's book The Design of Sites is the reference guide for interaction designers and the like.

The book captures principles and best practices of web design and distils them into design patterns, saving you from reinventing the wheel every time you encounter a new design problem.

I'm very impressed by this book and I'm sure it will save me a lot of time looking for best solutions. This might turn out to be my number two favourite book about interaction design

Links:

• The book at amazon.com 
• The book at amazon.co.uk 
• The book's companion website 
• Sample chapters 

Henrik Olsen - October 29, 2002

See also: Books (47) 

Interaction Design Patterns are descriptions of re-usable solutions to common design problems expressed in a standard format. Martijn van Welie has compiled a set of about 60 user-oriented web, GUI, and mobile patterns, making it one of the largest collections for Interaction Design. At his site you'll also find some background articles about Interaction Design Patterns.

Links:

• Martijn van Welie's collection of Interaction Design Patternes 

Henrik Olsen - July 02, 2002

See also: Tools (105)  Navigation (63)