practices and common approaches Capturing collective wisdom of designers across many uses and scenarios Giving teams a common language, reducing misunderstandings that arise from the different vocabulary Reducing time and costs in the design and development lifecycle Making usable designs the "path of least resistance" Eliminate wasted time spent "reinventing the wheel" Ensuring users have a consistent and predictable experience within an application or service Advantages over design guidelines Guidelines are generally more useful for describing requirements whereas patterns are useful tools for those who need to translate requirements into specific software solutions. Some people consider design guidelines as an instance of interaction design pattern as they are also common approach of capturing the experience in interaction design. However, interaction design patterns usually have the following advantages over design guidelines: Abstract guidelines, like the Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design by Shneiderman, do not suggest how to solve a problem like many interaction design pattern, and cannot be used for interdisciplinary communication. Furthermore, guidelines do not provide an explanation as to why a particular solution works. Concrete guidelines, like Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, are too tailored to a specific interface, and therefore are not as effective when applied to other interfaces (especially non-Macintosh interfaces). Other problems with guidelines are that they tend to be too numerous which makes it difficult for designers to apply the right guidelines. Also guidelines assume an absolute validity while usually they can only be applied in a particular context. A result of that is also that guidelines often tend to conflict just because they lack describing a context. Guidelines and patterns are not necessarily conflicting, and both can be used in conjunction to identify the problem and then create a valid solution. See also Design pattern Gameplay Elements of Design Information architecture Interaction design Interactivity Interface design Mobile interaction Sonic interaction design Usability User-centered design References Further reading A Pattern Approach to Interaction Design, by Jan Borchers, A Pattern Language for Web Usability, by Ian Graham, Interaction Design Patterns für NFC-basierte Electronic Data Capture Anwendungen by Andreas Prinz, Prinz Publishing, Dieburg 2014, . The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Websites (Second Edition), by Douglas K. van Duyne, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong, Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, by Jenifer Tidwell, Designing Social Interfaces: Principles, Patterns, & Practices for Improving the User Experience, by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone, Interaction