4 Reasons Pattern Tap Sucks
At first glance Pattern Tap is a pretty cool resource. More recently, I was inspired to write this post after becoming frustrated and wasting 30 minutes of my time.
__________________________________
- They lead you to believe you can contribute patterns. (You can but only once they are “moderated”)
- They don’t allow you to create a new ‘Collection’ or a new ‘tag’ when you contribute patterns.
- You can only create ‘User Sets’ of patterns that already exist.
- There is no context for contributing content. Only a small link at the bottom of the page that says “contribute”
___
I find it very annoying when you discover good design tools and cant use them. It’s like going to the circus and missing the show. Are you looking for design patterns? Want to contribute your ideas? Here are a few more recommendations.
___
Other design patterns that don’t suck,
and some more that do
_________________________________
UI Pattern Library | Rating ****
UI Pattern Factory | Rating ***
Flickr Set | Rating ***
Yahoo Pattern Library | Rating ***
Open Source Pattern Library | Rating **
Mobile Design Patterns | Rating **
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tagged design, product review, usability
Feb 18, 2009
matthew smith
Hi Chelsea,
Wow. Strong opinions! I like it. These are some of the issues I’d like to solve in the next go around. I’m sorry to hear that unlike the 5000+ other users out there, you decided not to use Pattern Tap. However, since it was a two man self funded project, I’m not surprised to find that I disappointed a few people, it’s inevitable.
Some of your critique has defense. If I opened up the submission to anyone, we’d have a wide open gallery like weheartit.com or something like scrnshots.com, which I simply don’t want. Other users made it clear in our recent survey that they LOVE the quality of design, and that the high bar is one of the things that keeps them coming back. However, perhaps there is a middle ground?
If you’d be interested in helping me think through some of those issues and giving me some insight into how I can manage a both/and strategy in this manner, I’d love to hear from you. Either email me directly, or hop on http://getsatisfaction.com/patterntap
Thanks!
Feb 18, 2009
Boag
i agree
Feb 18, 2009
Daniel
“They lead you to believe you can contribute patterns. (You can but only once they are “moderated”)”
When I first started using it, I thought this was lame, but I find since they starting letting users contribute moderated patterns – the selection has been 1) lacking the amount of high-quality designs and 2) too many patterns to sift through to find the good ones.
Maybe a user-rating would benefit this site so that the high-rated designs are near the top?
Feb 18, 2009
Matthew Smith
@Boag, who are you agreeing with? @Daniel, Thanks. Lets talk about your ideas via email or phone
Feb 18, 2009
chelsea@hirechelsea.com
Thanks for the responses. I appreciate the good design as well as quality that PatternTap has. It is very important to raise the bar, especially as the industry gets more and more competitive. I have returned several times. The more I come back to the site, the smaller the sets seemed to feel and the more I noticed repetition.
Part of the initial appeal of PatternTap is the idea that they are user contributed, and that I can contribute relatively easily. So how can we leverage community without sacrificing quality?
• Ratings (as suggested by Daniel)
• User Taps are separate than the main tap. This would allow me to use PatternTap as a tool as well as a resource. Users can upload their own taps for public viewing, but images have to be approved to be a part of the main set.
• Tags. If you allow users to contribute tags only, you wont change the taps and can keep the structure. Searching by tags that users have created gives the content more flexibility.
I look forward to seeing more cool things and will be sure to submit by comments to the Customer Service and Support Center.
Feb 18, 2009
Paul Godfrey
A mix between patterntap and imgspark.com would be the ultimate tool. I think whats missing from PT is a nice little firefox plugin for grabbing patterns and an easy way for you to keep a personal pattern collection (w/ tags etc.)
I for one appreciate the high bar that is set for design acceptance and that is the primary reason I keep coming back. I will however agree that there has a considerate amount of repetition and some very small sets.
Feb 19, 2009
Matthew Smith
Thanks for the feedback yall! I’ll keep that in mind as I work toward some redesign.
Dec 7, 2009
Dapo Olaopa
I love the way the criticism of PT was given and responded to. It’s the sharing of ideas & opinions like this that make things better in the long run. Nobody’s perfect, keep up the good work. Both of you.