I organized a suite submission of five late-breaking results papers, and an overview paper, about pattern languages in HCI for CHI'99, which took place in Pittsburgh from 15-20 May, 1999. While the suite was not accepted, here are
our submissions. The links provide PDF versions of the papers where available.

• Jan O. Borchers: Pattern Languages in Human-Computer Interaction.
  
  This is the suite overview paper. I summarize how pattern languages found their way from architecture to software engineering and HCI, what their current state in HCI is, and why they could be a useful framework for communication in HCI.


• Sally Fincher: What is a Pattern Language?
  
  To define the genre of pattern languages, Sally identifies five major elements - Capture of Practice, Abstraction, Organising Principle, Value System, and Presentation -, and discusses implications for a pattern language for HCI.


• Richard N. Griffiths and Lyn Pemberton: Teaching Usability Design Through Pattern Language.
  
  Lyn and Richard present three complementary approaches to using patterns in HCI education: teaching about the pattern language concept, teaching through patterns, and letting students discover patterns.


• Brian J. Moore: Towards a pattern language to shape the Information Technology Environment (Abstract).
  
  Brian reports how, in his organization, the pattern concept has been applied not only to individual software or interface objects, but also at the scale of the overall IT environment. He shows that it is also feasible to adapt Alexander's principles in pattern processing, such as maintenance.


• Michael P. Anton: User Interface Patterns for Data Intensive Applications (Abstract)
  
  Michael presents an emerging pattern language for interaction with large volumes of data that has developed out of financial software development projects. It can be used for communication between UI, database, and domain experts.


• Jan O. Borchers: Breaking the Interdisciplinary Limits of Computer-Human Interaction Design: A Pattern Approach.
  
  I suggest that HCI, software engineering, and application domain experts express their experience and guidelines as pattern languages which are then cross-linked to facilitate communication in interdisciplinary design teams, and give examples from music exhibit design.

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