Alexander advocated getting the people who would live or work in the buildings involved in the design and construction of the buildings. Get the people who will

Alexander advocated getting the people who would live or work in the buildings involved in the design and construction of the buildings. Get the people who will live in the place out in the field and work together to peg out the outlines of the buildings & refine the design. This philosophy is succinctly summarised in the book Peopleware: > local control of design by those who will occupy the space Unfortunately this aspect of Alexander's philosophy of letting the users participate in the design, construction or customisation of building and towns was ignored, while the other idea of design patterns became very popular when adapted to software. Some software is built for a market where the buyers are the end-users to software. Other software is built for markets where the purchasing decision is made by a committee of stakeholders, perhaps excluding the people who will be the day to day users of the software. If you contrast the two in terms of usability, you can start to appreciate what Alexander was getting at.