What's a design pattern?

Computer engineers, city planners, and architects use them. Writers, artists, and salesmen use them. Musicians, bloggers, and doctors use them. Football coaches, mothers, and bosses all use them. Basically, design patterns are found in both the best and worst of us. So what are design patterns? In its most abstract form, design patterns are simply: “things that repeat.”

The “thing” of repetition may be physical or behavioral in expression. The “thing” of repetition may be negative or positive in impact. The “thing” of repetition may be an annoyance or a delight. It matters not. The pattern has no politics. It is a property of repetition and its presence exists whether the designer intended them or not.

Design patterns are simply things that repeat in a design.

What is informatics?

Since I study and research at the School of Informatics, many people often ask, "What is informatics?" There are many good explicit answers to this question, but they're pretty abstract. To be concrete, I find it is helpful to be a little wrong about the definition up front and work down from there.

In the big umbrella version, "informatics" is the study of information. Being that information tends to be digital, informatics tends to be the study of information in digital contexts. The word is literally a mash-up of "information" + "automatic," i.e. the consequences and new uses of information that is easily replicated. In informatics, I currently focus on interaction design, which: 1) studies social and psychological consequences of information being so easily accessible; and 2) manifests more intuitive interactions made possible by new technologies and a greater understanding of the audience in context.

So, yeah, it's easier just to say "Informatics."