Save Time & Money – Leverage the expertise by using Design Patterns

Web designers & developers are constantly searching to find the best practices for guiding the user through completing a specific action or task on a website. And as more and more complex applications come online, and there is more and more user interaction with those applications, the problem to present information in a meaningful way for the user to interact with in those applications, becomes increasingly difficult.

But designers no longer have to work in a vacuum to figure out the solutions. They can now leverage all of the expertise, user behavior analysis, and best practices of the great user interface design patterns that are available online.

What is a user interface design pattern?

A design pattern is good design that has been vetted and tested for usability by designers, User Interface (UI) experts, and even the design community that have been proven to work well for very specific user situations and user issues. It is a package of proven expertise that informs the designer of the principles behind the design and what is known to work.

Using known and researched principles in your design will save you time and money and make your applications more intuitive for the user and easy to use.

All design patterns answer the following questions:

What is the Problem we are trying to solve?
What is the Solution?
When and why to use the pattern?

Where can I find design patterns?

Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Yahoo! breaks down their design patterns into five categories: Layout, Navigation, Selection, Rich Interaction, and Social. Within each category you will find an array of design patterns that not only answer the standard questions of What, When & Why they also provide real world examples, code examples, related patterns, and similar patterns from non Yahoo! libraries. They also have a community where you can discuss the design patterns with people who are trying to solve the same design problems.
Welie.com
The patterns on this site are grouped in a very meaningful way. The main categories are broken down into:
User needs which include navigating around, searching, shopping, making choices
basic interactions, dealing with data, personalizing, making choices, giving input.
Application needs which include drawing attention, feedback, simplifying interaction.
Context of design which include site types, experiences, page types
UI-Patterns.com
This website provides a good number of design patters but what makes it different is that they offer a lot of examples of actual sites that use good design principles via their screenshot collections and their resources.
Open Source Design Pattern Library
This is a community where designers, developers, and other people interested in patterns can come to reference material, collaborate on patterns and designs, and share their knowledge with everyone.