The original idea of using pattern languages for design knowledge was proposed by the architect Christopher Alexander in the 1970s. The book he wrote with his colleagues comprises 253 patterns on practical architectural design. Ten years after the book was published, in the late 1980s, Alexander’s idea of a pattern language was adopted in the field of software design by K. Beck and W. Cunningham, followed by the famous book “Design Patterns” by E. Gamma, et al. Since the 1990s, the fields in which pattern languages have been applied has greatly expanded, encompassing education, innovation, collaboration, and other professional areas and activity in everyday life, which we term these as “Pattern Language 3.0”. The challenge for pattern languages is finding ways to share knowledge and how to involve people into the collaborating design process. In this talk, I will give an overview of the history and frontiers of pattern languages, including examples in new domains, creating processes, and new ways for expressing pattern languages.

Bio

Takashi Iba is an associate professor in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University. He received a Ph.D. in Media and Governance from Keio University. He is the president of CreativeShift Lab, Inc. and a board member of The Hillside Group. Collaborating with his students, Dr. Iba created many pattern languages concerning human actions like Learning Patterns (2014), Presentation Patterns (2014), Collaboration Patterns (2014), Words for a Journey (2015), Project Design Patterns (2016) and also academic books in Japanese such as the bestselling Introduction to Complex Systems (1998).