Term Definition: design pattern

[GAM94] defines a design pattern as:

"A design pattern provides a scheme for refining the subsystems or components of a software system, or the relationships between them. It describes a commonly-recurring structure of communicating components that solves a general design problem within a particular context."

Design patterns are medium to small-scale patterns, smaller in scale than architectural patterns but typically independent of programming language. When a design pattern is bound, it will form a portion of a concrete design model (perhaps a portion of a design mechanism). Design patterns tend, because of their level, to be applicable across domains.