Pattern mining is a structured way to surface recurring solutions that already exist in products and design work. Instead of trying to catalogue everything, this tactic helps you find, cluster, and evaluate the patterns that matter most. It keeps your system relevant by capturing what teams are already doing and turning the best of it into shared solutions.
Pattern Mining
How to
-
Find the hotspots
Look at where patterns are already forming, such as repeated flows, components, or design fragments across products.
-
Gather evidence
Use Audit results, System Health Checks, or Interviews with teams to spot gaps and overlaps. Broader product audits can also reveal what's slipping through.
-
Spot repetition
Scan design files and codebases to find recurring Look through design files and codebases to find recurring solutions that aren't yet standardised. Watch for repetitive component structures, similar UI patterns, or design fragments that appear across multiple products.
-
Cluster and compare
Bring examples together. Group them into themes, highlight differences, and note edge cases that may need to remain product-specific.
-
Shape next steps
Feed promising candidates into Design Exploration, then validate through Usability Testing before bringing them into the system.
Discover patterns: AI's good at finding and clustering similar patterns across products and generating profiles with usage data. You evaluate which ones deserve systematising.