The stream of Patterntap.com.

Alright my fellow design freaks. Its time to shed some light on things. Pattern Tap has been a great resource for a lot of folks, and I’m psyched to have put it out there. A lot of people think that Pattern Tap was done by a big group of people, but lets get something straight. It was me and my good friend Chris Pollock. I did design, Chris coded it in Code Igniter, and we all celebrated. I say that to let you know that in my mind, its amazing that I’ve been able to keep up with Pattern Tap as much as I have! So, please continue to extend grace to me as we prepare for Pattern Tap 2.0.

Pattern Tap 2.0 will be a partnership between myself (@squaredeye), Sean Gaffney (@seangaffney), and Matt Bainton (@inlikealion).

The priorities for Pattern Tap 2.0 are as follows:

1. Search We are focusing on search over browsing. We hope to release a very low-weight beta in the next few weeks that will show what we’re thinking. The hope is to be agile and see how you all feel about the search before implementing it in full design form.

2. Uploading/Contributing We are looking at ways of making the uploading process easier, and possibly integrating with either flickr, little snapper, or just getting a firefox plugin rolled out. If you have any interest in helping with this portion of the project please let us know. We would be quite happy to show off your coding skills as an affiliate.

We are also looking at ways we can allow users to upload their own inspiration. We will maintain our high integrity in the Tap, but we want to make sure we give users more opportunity to dialogue about what makes good design and interact on the issue.

1. More Web-Appy Greatness We will be making Pattern Tap 2.0 to utilize the best of the modern web, with CSS2 CSS3, potentially HTML 5, and definitely Jquery goodness. IE users will need to upgrade their browsers to firefox if they want to enjoy Pattern Tap’s fullness.

We will be utilizing full width browsing for large and small screens alike.

We will be looking for ways to improve the use and strategy for User Sets.

We know you’re excited, so are we

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates. We’ll make sure to update more often as we move toward release.

Hello Pattern Tap peeps! As a precursor to the many great things that are coming for Pattern Tap in the not so distant future, we have unleashed the user contribution form. With it we unleash an 8GB ipod touch, to you, yes you lucky nut!

Using the upload form at Patterntap.com/contribute you’ll be able to upload images that you feel ought to be in the tap and aren’t! Each image you enter (that is accepted) before now and December 31, 2008 will enter you in a random drawing for an 8GB ipod touch.

In Case You’re wondering

Images will be moderated by yours truly and by the following criteria:

• Design quality
• Design Solution Focus (please no screenshots of an entire home page unless you absolutely feel its necessary!)
• Whether the design fits into the current structure of Pattern Tap Collections and Tags
• Images are subject to change (but will retain mention of your contribution) see below.
• Images must not be direct duplicates (if you’re concerned, just google “site:patterntap.com the-url-in-question”)
• Images must be “submitted” before the 31st at 11:59pm EST/US.

You and your Pattern Tap name gets mention!

Take Nick Sergeant for instance, who was the first contributor on Tuesday, and now gets his name posted at Pattern Tap and here, showing that he not only has a cool military name, but also cares about great design!

Lets not be greedy though!

If Pattern Tap receives 500 accepted entries by the 31st of December, then we will show our love to very loving Nadus Films, to the tune of $1000. Nadus Films is dedicated to bringing light to the sudanese plight.

From Nadus’ own About Page:

Our purpose is to use our gifts and resources to document the story of the Sudanese, and share it with the world.

So Get on it! Start your uploading engines!

Well, this little Pattern Tap experiment has gone crazy! I never knew it would be such a helpful resource to so many designers. I just wanted it to be a great resource for ME!

In the last two months we’ve seen over 2000 people sign up and start using Pattern Tap, and that’s about 1500 more than we thought we’d have at this point. We’ve really been overwhelmed with the encouraging praise and hope for what Pattern Tap can be in the daily inspiration needs of designers all over the place!

What’s next for Pattern Tap

Better Search and Browse We’ve heard an enormous plea for search-ability and we will answer it. We want to make the Tap, the User Sets, and People more searchable, browsable, and accessible for all.

Redefining Collections/User Sets We’ve seen that the relationship between these two sections of Pattern Tap hasn’t been as useful or as clear as we had hoped. We’ll be working out a number of ways to have better integration between these areas, as well as finding ways to have better granularity of the collections. One area where this has been really necessary is in collections like Ecommerce where there really ought to be a kind of sub-collections that represent checkout, shopping carts, payment forms, etc.

The Small Stuff

• Delete Sets
• private/public for User Sets
• Raising Contributor status
• Easier ability to contribute
• Notification of follow up comments
• OpenId
• Gravatar option
• Better RSS management
• Notification of what’s been added to the tap recently
• Better image/site duplicate find

Even Bigger Ideas

• Allow users to upload into their own sets
• Users get to share sets, recommend sets to others
• Allow users to import contacts and share Pattern Tap more easily
• Link designs to the User Interface Patterns they are associated with at other UI sites
• Users can recommend images into Collections
• User Uploads into user sets
• Featured Images/Design Solutions
• Google Maps Mashup for finding designers near you

New Development is not free

Squared Eye is working with some of our close design and development colleagues to develop a Pattern Tap Partnership of like minded professionals in the industry who believe that design resources and education lead to more and better work.

This is how we’re raising funds to support the next wave of development at Pattern Tap.

If you or your organization are interested in partnering with Pattern Tap in any way, don’t hesitate to let us know, and we’ll send you information on the benefits of Partnership.

Have a great finish to your week!

Matthew Principal at Squared Eye

Welcome to our new stream. We’ve got plenty of stuff for you to browse here already, but more good stuff to come. We’ll be posting notes on how to use Pattern Tap, interviews, small updates, and some insight into where the Tap is heading.

Thanks for joining us, we’re psyched you’re here. Feel free to snag the Stream RSS while you’re here and stay updated on all that’s going on.

Thanks,

Matthew Smith Head Tappist Monk and Principal at Squared Eye

Later this week, I’ll be sharing some of the changes you can expect from Pattern Tap in September. This will be a place where we’ll share how to best use Pattern Tap and some of the great things that will be coming out of our new work and new team sometime in September.

I want to throw out a quick thank you to our new team:

• Paul Annett at ClearLeft
• Brian Lovin at Elite by Design
• Chris Messina as Factory Joe
• Anthony Park at TwoEyes
• Chris Pollock at Sim.plified
• Daniel Scrivner as Daniel Scrivner
• Kevin Smith at Codebrulee

Thank you all for your help, insight, participation, and enthusiasm about Pattern Tap! Also thanks to those who’ve submitted screenshots for us to consider. We’re eager to grow the volume in the tap, even as we have a tight hoop for quality. For now, enjoy what you see from flickr and twitter, you’ll hear from us soon on the big stuff!