By Martijn van Welie.
Title of site: www.welie.com -- patterns in Interaction Design
URL: http://www.welie.com/patterns/

Positive points

• This is the most extensive online pattern collection.
• The patterns have clear, easy to recognize names.
• The structure of the pattern descriptions is clear, and set up for online reading and practical use: Problem - Use when - Solution.
• The collection is easy to browse from the homepage.

Negative points

• The patterns are not related - they are not combined to form a pattern language. But patterns cannot be viewed without their interrelations. This way they become ad hoc descriptions. -- Lately there have been some improvements to connect the patterns, though not in a formal manner.
• Patterns seem to have been written with great haste; they lack contemplation. The collection tends to feel like an inventory of design elements. This has probably to do with the fact that the probem desciptions are not really defined as problems. See discussion below.
• The patterns are too much inclined towards usability. Take these descriptions:
  • The users need to find an item or specific information (Simple search)
  • The users need to know where they are in a hierarchical structure (Bread crumb)
  • Users want to buy a product (Shopping cart)
  • Users need to know the conditions under which they can use a site (Footer bar)
    Is it really that the users need all this?
• Needs more examples!

Discussion

What is really the problem that Shopping cart solves? That the user wants to buy a product? There must be many more solutions to the problem "Users want to buy a product".
Wouldn't it be more along the lines that it is convenient to pay all your goods at once instead of one by one? That way visitors will buy more probably. And that it is comforting to have a concept from our everyday reality translated almost literally to the online world?

Added:
It is not so much about the cart, as about the process that is important: collect products, go to the checkout counter, pay, take your stuff with you.

Compare now this description from A pattern language:
Housing hill
Every town has places in it which are so central and desirable that at least 30-50 households per acre will be living there. But the apartment houses which reach this density are almost all impersonal.

This description presents a conflict, a problem and a hint to a solution, all in 2 lines. And you are triggered to read on. Language is used much more powerfully here.

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-- ArthurClemens - 27 Jul 2003