Carnegie Mellon University

MSE Course Spotlight

17-695 Design Patterns, taught by Associate Teaching Professor Swarnalatha Ashok, focuses on the techniques necessary to identify design problems, mine design patterns from existing well-designed software, improve quality through documented and proven solutions to common problems, and apply design patterns effectively to improve the quality of software. 

Ashok has a holistic approach to teaching design patterns to students, explaining how they work together within the context of an application. “I give my students an initial design [based on a real-world application]. We look at the initial design, discuss the design problem and issues, look at case studies, and thenI  ask them to improve the design pattern. Integrated into a holistic approach in which the context of an application is easy for the students to understand.”

Ashok has been teaching design patterns for close to 30 years.