Pattern languages in Modern Design

Work community to slack

According to #41 Work Community from Christopher Alexander’s patterns, Alexander proposed a theory that workspaces function as communities. He stated five relationships about these work communities which help form activity nodes and still can be seen in modern technology platforms. For the five relationships he mentioned, It reminds me of some of the experiences when I am using Slack. Firstly, workplaces must not be too scattered, nor too agglomerated, but clustered in groups of 15. The whole company or organization can be divided into small and organized teams so that people can connect more closely with their team members. Secondly, Alexander demonstrated that the workplace community contains a mix of different jobs. In Slack, I can add channels with different topics which help people follow along with everything related to their own projects, works, or teams. Third, there is a common piece of space within the work community, which ties the individual workshops and offices together. Obviously, slack is a sharing community as a whole, so it is easy to connect and collaborate with other teams or companies through different workspaces or channels. Fourth, the work community is interlaced with the larger community in which it is located. It is true that an individual work community can not be isolated from the other spaces, such as how office cubicles connect to common corridors. Slack organizes and lists all channels at one side, so I can stay on the same page to work and communicate faster and more efficiently. Finally, it is necessary that the common space exists at two distinct and separate levels. This relationship is prevalent in current architecture layouts. However, in virtual platforms, people in fact are able to casually regulate their individual workspaces as opposed to navigating physical buildings.

#148 Small Work Groups

Alexander mentioned that people prefer to stay in a small group which is an experience that most people have. He pointed out that small workspaces have an intimate atmosphere but they don’t support communications between groups. Thus, he came up with an idea that people in institutions can be broken into small groups, and also they have common space to share between groups. The idea is similar to one of the features of Zoom that I use everyday. It has a “Breakout Room” feature which allows people to split Zoom meetings in multiple separate sessions. Take design classes as an example, professors usually separate a whole big class into several small groups in order to have group discussions. Professors are also able to switch up the people within those different Breakout Rooms on Zoom. Personally, I feel that virtual group discussions are better than in-person discussions. Since Breakout Rooms exactly divide people into a comparatively closed space, I can focus on my group without any disruptions from other groups.   

#131 The Flow Through Rooms 

In this chapter, Alexander indicated the importance of flows and arrangements between rooms.  When I was first visiting the Museum of Asian Art, I felt like I was led by signs and instructions after I passed through the reception desk. Exhibitions and artworks were well arranged during my visit. I noticed that in most applications, the feature of onboarding or tutorials smoothly transitions first-time users to main content. Moreover, I found out that there are signs or icons designers use today for leading users to different interfaces. For example, ‘back’ and ‘forward’ arrows lead us to the previous or the next page.        

In conclusion, Alexander’s pattern language has a great influence on many aspects of design. As an interaction designer, I think I can integrate Alexander’s principles and strategies of place-making of my virtual design work.