Common Ground - A Pattern Language for Human-Computer Interface Design by Jenifer Tidwell

"Preface: The Case for HCI Design Patterns

Twenty years ago, Christopher Alexander shook the architectural world with his landmark book The Timeless Way of Building. His thesis was that one could achieve excellence in architecture by learning and using a carefully-defined set of design rules, or patterns; and though the quality of a well-designed building is sublime and hard to put into words, the patterns themselves that make up that building are remarkably simple and easy to understand by laymen.

The patterns that he and his colleagues defined -- published in a second volume, A Pattern Language -- are an attempt to codify generations of architectural wisdom. They are not abstract principles that require you to rediscover how to apply them successfully, nor are they overly specific to one particular situation or culture. Instead, they are somewhere in between: a pattern describes possible good solutions to a common design problem within a certain context, by describing the invariant qualities of all those solutions."

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