Pattern language and storytelling: A methodology for describing embodied experience and encouraging others to learn

This paper addresses two issues. One is how to describe embodied experience, and the other is how to encourage people to learn from someone else's descriptions of experiences. In the domain of town-walking, we have devised a methodology for doing these, in which embodied experience is described as a combination of the physical things and setting that one's body faces and the interpretations one generates for those. That is a kind of pattern language. We argue that a pattern language is a mere provision of distilled words to tell about experiences, and may not make sense to others. Our methodology provides not only pattern language but also the original stories of experiences from which pattern language has been distilled. Stories told are expected to set the grounds to understand words in the pattern language, and motivate others to use them to see and story-tell about towns. In the workshop on learning in town-walking, we found that metacognitive awareness to physical features and relations in towns is the key to learning.