Allison Bloodworth, OCIO-TPO
Daniela Rosner, School of Information
Building good user interfaces is no trivial task. Many UC Berkeley web developers lack time for, or formal training in, user interface (UI) design. Campus budgets often do not include allotments for UI designers or usability experts. Even when a website or application developer consciously focuses on user interface design, the resulting application can have usability, consistency, and interoperability problems.
The User Interface (UI) Design Patterns website, a new collaborative tool for UC Berkeley IT designers and developers, is an effort to mitigate this problem. The goal of the website is to provide these users with a set of reusable patterns that can be used to help solve design problems in a systematic and consistent way.
A UI design pattern is a technology-neutral solution to a common UI design problem. The UI Design Patterns website describes a pattern by explaining the design problem, the solution, when to use it, the rationale behind it, and accessibility issues for the pattern. Visual examples as well as pointers to similar patterns in other design pattern libraries accompany solutions to each pattern. Examples of patterns include forms, navigation, search, and interactions such as managing a profile.
The website not only acts as a library of patterns, but also functions as a collaborative tool, allowing more experienced UI designers to add patterns to the library and share their knowledge with less experienced designers. Users of the site can also provide comments on patterns, which may include code snippets or supplementary information on the use of the pattern. In addition to offering a helpful starting point for beginning design work, the site has the potential to foster collaboration and community growth among IT designers and developers across the UC Berkeley campus.
The UI Design Patterns website was initially developed in spring 2006 as the Masters project of a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley's School of Information. Information on their project can be found at their Web Patterns Project website. We are currently conducting interviews and usability testing sessions with Berkeley campus professionals who design, create, and maintain websites and applications to identify additional user needs and to improve the usability of the UI Design Patterns site. We expect to launch a beta version of the site here at UC Berkeley in the coming months. Information on the launch of the site will be sent out on the Webnet mailing list.
If you are interested in participating in usability testing, helping to run the library, learning more about the project, or being informed when it launches, please contact Daniela Rosner, a Masters student at the School of Information, or Allison Bloodworth, of the Technology Program Office in the Office of the CIO.
[ iNews | Search | IST | UC Berkeley Computing | UC Berkeley ]
iNews: UC Berkeley information technology news channels
Copyright 2007, The Regents of the University of California