I was invited to talk to the students at the Akademie Fur Kindermedien in Germany on the topic of classifying interfaces. Two other speakers also spoke: Mario Giordano and Nicole Kellerhals (a consultant script writer).

We were asked: how can the rules of genre help define the creative and productive process. Immediately this statement made me uncomfortable. The use of the word genre seemed inappropriate as it promised more then we currently know. The definition of genres, in writing, film, theatre etc., has developed over a long time. When a particular genre is mentioned, instantly we (the general public) have an idea of what it refers to; take a thriller film as an example. The thriller genre has a fast pace with frequent action; they are full of suspense and often end in cliffhangers. In this way films can be arranged into clear categories, genres, which the audience understands. Producers and publishers exploit our understanding of genres in order to market new releases.

Genre is used as a tool during the creation process where authors can use the rules of a particular genre to guide them. Nicole Kelerhals spoke about this: describing the commonly understood elements of many film genres, she showed how each have their own distinctive elements. Mario Giordano gave authors instructions based on Raymond Chandler’s rules of crime stories. For example: do not give the detective a love interest as it detracts from the main story line, the mystery.

Interfaces, I feel, do not have such clear definitions or rules. I use the IA organisational schemes, taxonomy versus folksonomy, as metaphors to describe the difference:

• A producer or publisher identifies an item as it is released into a genre much like an information architect creates a taxonomy.

• Interfaces are created and released without explicit association with a type. The creators of interfaces vote for types by choosing to create them.

Genres are created in a top down method while interfaces, unconsciously, are created with a bottom up approach.

If the objective is to identify a model to aid the creative and productive process then we do have such things, but they are not genres. Without the years of development that it has taken for genres to form we need to learn about the context of use. The tools that I use in order to do this are: research, iterative design, design patterns and personas and scenarios.

Much like genres, design patterns aim to create a classification scheme via which we can aid the creative process. They do not talk about rules but outline the context, form and solution of the problem allowing the designers to resolve the problem. I talk about my understanding of UI Design Patterns in the ‘Are design patterns a truly useful design tool when designing interfaces?’ post.

Mario, Nicola and I had a discussion where they suggested that patterns were genres by another name. Could it be that in order to identify a genre the patterns for that genre need to be clear (fast pace, frequent action, suspense, cliffhangers)? Interfaces do not yet have genres, as we have not yet identified complete pattern languages for them. Each practitioner is consciously or unconsciously identifying patterns as they work. In time perhaps we will have UI genres when we amalgamate and rationalise our patterns, but we are currently too young for that as we are only just discovering the patterns.