Patterns of Interaction:

a Pattern Language for CSCW

Welcome to the home page for the PoInter project. The project is concerned with investigating the appropriateness of patterns as a means of communicating information about how people interact with each other through and around technology. Ultimately, this is with a view to informing the design process for computer systems to support the work and activities that the people are engaged in, which is an on-going theme for our research here at Lancaster.

In these pages, you will find background to the project, links to work on patterns elsewhere, publications and reports available on-line, and candidate patterns arising out of our work.

Background material

Background for Pointer is broken down under the following headings:

• Ethnography in systems design, which has been the subject of research at Lancaster since the early 1990s. (Links are to the Coherence project bibliography).
• Patterns, both in Architecture (by Christopher Alexander in particular-the inspiration for much of the work on patterns) and other work on patterns and pattern resources elsewhere.

Related projects at Lancaster

Our work on patterns of cooperative interaction is also feeding into project activity 3 (Design for Dependability) of the DIRC (Dependability Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration) project, with a focus on patterns of dependable work practice.

Also related: Patterns of Cooperative Interaction in eXtreme Programming (XP)

Pointer continues a long-established thread of research in CSCW at Lancaster University. Previous projects in this area are listed below:

• Coherence
• SYCOMT
• COMIC

Lancaster Personnel