What is Design Patterns

Design patterns are standard solutions to common problems in software design.

Common solutions to common problems in software design.

A design pattern captures the essence of a successful solution to a recurring usability problem in interactive systems. It consists of a name, ranking, sensitizing example, context, problem statement, evidence (rationale, examples), solution, sketch, references to other patterns, synopsis, and credits (Borchers, 2001).

Expressing the gist of a solution so that it can be reused many times. Defining a pattern, or a pattern system, is a way to capture the design knowledge of a community, to share it and to leverage it for future developments.

Common solutions to common problems, particularly in software design.

Design patterns represent solutions to problems that arise when developing software within a particular context. Design patterns capture the static and dynamic structure and collaboration among key participants in software designs. Design patterns are generic design pieces that need to be instantiated before uses. The instantiation of a design pattern describes the process of applying generic design pieces into a system design. The integration of design patterns describes the process of composing multiple design patterns to solve a number of design problems. Design patterns can be integrated by overlapping common parts from different patterns or adding new relationships between parts from different patterns. The formalization of design patterns is to apply rigorous methods to specify design patterns or to verify their properties. These formal methods include logic-based and process-based methods. The evolution of a design pattern is a process to add or remove design elements to/from existing design pattern applications in a software system. It takes place when new requirements, platforms, technologies, or environments change and therefore software system need to be adapted to such change. The visualization of design pattern provides techniques and tools for explicitly visualizing the instances of design patterns applied in a large software system design. These visualization techniques and tools can help software designers for tracing, identifying, and checking design patterns in the software system design, and making right design decision of applying design patterns.

A semi-formal way of documenting a solution to a design problem in a particular field of expertise.