Yesterday, I read A Pattern Language for Pattern Writing, which Tim Hunt recommended earlier. It was really good, and though it was at first dry, the need I had – producing Moodle user interface guidelines – kept me motivated. The book itself uses the patterns it presents – this was confusing at start. But as I read on, it seemed to work and both the form of the book and the content contributed to help understand the same substance. Although the patterns of the book are for creating software (programming) patterns, it seems to me that mostly they may be good for also UI guidelines. Other HIGs seem to have way less form and more prose, though.
Too bad it was written in book style as a single web page. As it still had the website’s navigation, I had to copy just the text content to a word processor, format the text, add a table of contents and print it to read it. Hm, maybe I should make the guidelines I am making easily printable as one document? Not the first priority though. It makes me wonder if the guidelines themselves are appropriate for the web if they were designed for print. I am planning to think about the form of the guidelines for the rest of the week and then present examples and my core ideas to the community on Monday.
Also found Lazarus while searching for a solution to the frustration caused by various web forms losing my data. Either this sort of functionality should be integrated to all browsers, or most web apps should be WAY more careful not to lose user data. I am writing a guideline for Moodle for various Moodle scenario specific ways to avoid users getting any more paranoid about their data than they are already.