About this Project
Origins of the Library
The concept of an Anti-Hate by Design social pattern library evolved out of the ongoing work of ADL’s Center for Technology and Society to mitigate hate on social and gaming platforms. Our teams advise social and online game platforms on ways they can enhance their reporting processes, mitigate, suppress and block malicious and hateful content, and adjust policies in their terms of services and codes of conduct.
We realized that many of our recommendations were consistent across platforms, implying common principles and patterns of interaction. Designing and developing an Anti-Hate by Design pattern library with examples, research and important questions to guide teams working in this space gives us a more centralized way to capture and share these recommendations.
Why have a Social Pattern Library
An interaction design pattern library can satisfy a host of needs related to efficiencies, consistency as expressed in user experience solutions and the ability to keep everyone on the same page within an organization. Decisions around specific solutions and specific contexts represented in a pattern library can be as representative of the brand for the company as the logo. A pattern library codifies the decisions around what will and will not be an acceptable solution in specific instances.
Who is the audience for a pattern library?
A pattern library can inform developers and other cross-functional team members about common design solutions so that the design team isn’t needed for every piece of a project. In these cases, the design team can act as director and provide feedback without having to do the heavy lifting of the design work.
In the case of a SOCIAL Pattern Library, the patterns are all focused on interactions between people being mediated by the technology.
What is a Pattern?
An interaction pattern can be defined as:
an optimal solution to a common problem within a specific context
Patterns are used like building blocks or bricks. They are fundamental components of a user experience and describe interaction processes. They can be combined with other patterns as well as other pieces of interface and content to create an interactive user experience. They are technology and visually agnostic and do not prescribe either of these. Interaction design patterns give guidance to a team for how to solve a specific problem in a context in a way that has been shown to work over and over again.
A pattern also captures the situation, competing constraints and provides a canonical solution.
It is repeatable and is an archetype.