Investigating the web

When writing about how user interface design patterns are used and should be used, there is no real empirical evidence for what is written other than personal observations, professional experience about what works, and pure common sense. At no point has any of the pattern libraries that exist on the web today tried to conduct a thorough investigation about the state of UI patterns.

The UI Pattern survey initiative will try to conduct just that. This application was built in order to learn more about how design patterns are used on the web today.

Get involved!

Submit website Submit question

The list of websites included in the investigation is constantly expanding. At the moment, 128 websites are in the index. If you believe that a website is missing from the index, then go submit a new website to it.

24 questions are included in the investigation at the moment. If you have a question you want answered or believe the investigation is missing one, then you're more than welcome to submit a question of your own.

Open for all

This initiative is about obtaining knowledge. Do you have a question you want to ask? Well, then submit it to the system, and the survey will include your question! If you have a site that you think should be included in the investigation, then simply submit the site! The results of the survey and questions added at a later stage will be published once a sufficient number of replies have been obtained.

But, I don't understand...

Well, it gets interesting when you from the results can draw that in X percent of the cases, the login link is located to the left of the sign up link or that it is more common that a search button is decorated with an icon than without.

The extend of the possibilities of what answers are possible is extremely big and new questions can quickly be asked and answered within short amounts of time, as new questions will be favored over questions with lots of replies. You'll get an answer quickly!

Submissions will be moderated

Even though it is encouraged to submit sites and questions, each submission will be moderated. It is assumed that all respondents share the ability to understand the English language and none other. This is why only sites in English will be accepted. The same is true for questions: all questions should be asked in English.

The acceptance of submissions also depends on the relevance. Is a question or website submission not found to be of sufficient relevance to this survey, it will not be included in the index of questions. If the site is not relevant to the target of the investigation and is not one of the more significant players in the market, then it will not be accepted into the index.

Target: Large websites with a community

This first survey will only investigate websites with account functionality and as such questions in the survey reflect the investigation of that subject.

Let's get started!

There is really nothing more to tell. I hope this initiative will better all of our knowledge. If you want to get in touch, then contact info(at)ui-patterns(dot)com

- Anders Toxboe

Participate in the survey now!