Pattern Languages
Contextual Quote
"We develop Pattern Languages , not for their own sake, but because we wish to develop our capacity to live well within complex environments. Pattern language is a tool which can help us map these environments, trace the flows within them, and develop shared understanding of these in community. But the languages are not where we want to live - if the languages are useful, it is as a learning and a practice that connects our unconsciousness - the most capable and flexible tool for engaging with complexity known to us - with our reality."
- Dil Green [1]
Description
1. George Pór:
"A pattern is a named nugget of insight that conveys the essence of a proven solution to a recurring problem within a certain context." (from Patterns and Software: Essential Concepts and Terminology, by Brad Appleton) 2000 http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/docs/patterns-intro.html
“Many patterns form a language. Just as words must have grammatical and semantic relationships to each other in order to make a spoken language useful, design patterns must be related to each other in order to form a pattern language.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_language
For example, a pattern language for commons governance will be a structured method of describing practices worth replicating in different areas and phases of governance work.
Pattern language can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of such functions as: scanning international efforts relevant to a complex issue at hand; building community knowledge gardens, also known as “dynamic knowledge repositories.” (Engelbart, 1992)
It can serve the commons as an interface that connects practitioners, experts, and civil society organizations, and also, as a key resource to work through issues in any domain, in workshops, conferences, unconferences, and online forums."
2. Dil Green:
"Design in complex domains is always subject to unintended consequences with negative impact Interventions in complex systems are subject to the Iron Law of Unintended Consequences. Since such systems exhibit strong path dependency, sensitivity to intial conditions (aka butterfly effects), recursive feedback loops which themselves interact and so on, the outcome of any given intervention is sure to produce some unforeseen results.
These may be benign, insignificant or even welcome. Equally, they may have effects which run counter to the intent, or produce larger negative effects in related conditions. The point is that they will occur.
Design Pattern Languages seek to map a system into relatively understandable domains - Patterns which are carefully identified and documented in such a way that each is recognisable - A Pattern is a whole - so that building an 'in memory' model is within the working capacity of human cognition.
In this way, each pattern can engage the full creative and analytical capacity of the human brain - both conscious and pre-conscious.
Each language is structured according to some Hierarchy of Scope, so that it is practical to select a mode of intervention appropriate to the resources and ambition of the design work at hand.
Relevant patterns are selected and form a framework for the development and testing of the design vision. Work with this model should give increased capacity to identify and understand the reasons for emergence of at least some unintended consequences.
Therefore:
Frame Design Pattern Languages as multi-faceted statements around positive intent in a domain, is structured on the basis of careful analysis of recurring patterns and the conditions in which desired qualities can emerge."
(https://www.patternlanguage.institute/design_language)
Discussion
What are Pattern Languages for ?
Dil Green:
"in order to become more adept at managing human-made environments we need to get the decision making process out of our minds - use some kind of formalised representation."
See the Graphical representation by Christopher Alexander at [2].
![[2]](https://www.patternlanguage.institute/images/Formalisation-PatternLanguage.png){kind=link}
"Pattern Language approaches seek to develop a formalisation mode that simultaneously meets several requirements.
We wish to be able to analyse and document complex human-made systems in a way that supports us well. The format needs to be at once loose - to avoid mechanistic reductivism - and rigorous - to tease out cognitive bias and maximise clarity. It needs to be applicable to a wide variety of cases and conditions - human-made systems operate on multiple interacting levels, from the brute mechanical to the pre-consciously emotional. It needs to be useful - easy to interact with and understand, adaptable to the specifics of circumstance, yet definitive.
Build Pattern Languages to document the recurring conditions of complex human-made environments, to develop understanding, to communicate analysis, and to support safer and wider intervention and design. eee
Make sure that the languages you build are engaging and open to development - that they constitute a developing and dynamic Living Language . Do what you can to encourage an understanding of the language as Social Poetry, and not any kind of meccano-like constructor set. Engage with relevant stakeholders within the domain, seek their involvment and encourage the development within that community of groups of Language Gardeners."
(https://www.patternlanguage.institute/pattern_languages)
More Information
- A Pattern Language – book by Christopher Alexander