Alexander’s Design Patterns

Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language described a practical architectural system in a form that a theoretical mathematician or computer scientist might call a generative grammar. It provides 253 patterns describing towns, neighborhoods, houses, gardens, rooms, and western structures.

In Slack, there are large groups that contain all the IxD students and professors, also there are small groups for several people. It’s just like what Alexander describes for the work community, ” each one a collection of smaller clusters of workplaces which have their own courtyards, gathered round a larger common square or common courtyard.”

In the Degrees of Publicness, Alexander mentioned that: “People are different, and the way they want to place their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic kinds of difference.” In a Facebook group, people have their own blog space, and the large group space is divided into each small personal blogs. People can communicate with each other in their own blog or give comments to other people’s blogs. And when people want to post new content, they can choose to allow everyone to view or only give a certain group of people to view. All these functions satisfied different people’s needs.

In the Reception Welcome You, Alexander mentioned that: “To make a person feel at ease, you must do the same for him as you would do to welcome him to your home.” These years, when people go out to travel, they will choose B&B instead of hotels. B&B can provide a more homely feeling to its customers.

In the Small Work Groups, Alexander mentioned that: “When more than a half dozen people work in the same place, it is essential that they not be forced to work in one huge undifferentiated space, but that instead, they can divide their workspace up, and so form smaller groups.” In the class discussion, we do the same things for this idea, divide people into small groups is the more efficient method.