A pattern language for designing innovative projects: project design patterns

Abstract

In this paper, we present a pattern language for sharing practical knowledge to design innovative projects, which we call project design patterns. This pattern language consists of 32 patterns about designing projects, which are organised into five categories: core, learn, create, live, and pleasure. This collection of practical knowledge behind designing projects was created through a mining process of interviewing professional project designers, organising the mined elements using the KJ method (a method for clustering ideas named based on the initials of its originator), and writing the information in the pattern format: pattern name, illustration, context, problem, solution, and consequence. This paper presents three patterns in full as well as summaries of all 32 patterns. Survey results and responses of workshop participants and users, presented in the later sections of the paper, provide exploratory data which testify to the potential power of the proposed language for thinking, reflection, and dialogue on designing innovative projects.