Jakub Linowski, the author of Wireframes Magazine, wrote an interesting blog post about personal pattern books. He recently started sketching and writing down different examples of interesting UI design solutions he stumbles upon to get the most out of design patterns.
Jakub writes:
By personalizing these patterns however, there could be a few added benefits beyond just observing other people’s work passively. For one, I’m beginning to notice that after drawing out some selected examples it becomes easier to internalize and remember them later on in the future. When working on projects, these sketched patterns tend to emerge from memory more vividly than ones that were just seen somewhere.
Create a personal “pattern book” with Patternry
Jakub records the patterns in a physical notebook he keeps with him. Notebooks are great, but if you want to keep your patterns more organized and have them available online, Patternry is the way to go. With it you can easily build and maintain a personal design resource containing the patterns that are particularly useful to you. One major plus for Patternry is that you can kick-start your library using the existing design patterns as a basis for your personal pattern resource.
Here’s how to get started:
- Sign up if you haven’t already.
- Create a pattern library
- Select the ready-made patterns you need from the Open Library.
- Unlock patterns that need editing and make them fit your specific needs.
- Fill in the gaps in the library by writing your own private patterns.
And that’s it!
Personal design pattern libraries are great learning tools and sources of inspiration. If you work in a team and want to share the design knowledge and design more consistent interfaces faster, create a shared workspace for your organization where you can invite other people to collaborate with. Patternry is in beta, so both personal and shared workspaces are free to use for now. After the beta period has ended, you will be able to choose from free (personal pattern library) and paid plans (shared pattern libraries).
