Design and the Digital Humanities: A Handbook for Mutual Understanding

Milena Radzikowska and Stan Ruecker

This is an essential practical guide for academics, researchers, and professionals involved in the digital humanities, and designers working with them. It prepares readers from both fields for working together, outlining disciplinary perspectives and lessons learned from more than twenty years of experience, with over two dozen practical exercises.

The central premise of the book is a timely one – that the twin disciplines of visual communication design and digital humanities (DH) are natural allies, with much to be gained for researchers, students, and practitioners from both areas who are able to form alliances with those from the other side. The disciplines share a common fundamental belief in the extraordinary value of interdisciplinarity, which in this case means that the training, experience, and inclinations from both fields naturally tends to coincide. The fields also share an interest in research that focuses on humanities questions and approaches, where the goal is to improve understanding through repeated observation and discussion. Both disciplines tend to be generative in nature, with the ultimate end in many cases of designing and creating the next generation of systems and tools, whether those be intended for dealing with information or communication.

The book describes and demonstrates foundational concepts from both fields with numerous examples, as well as projects, activities, and further readings at the end of each chapter. It provides the complete coverage of core design and DH principles, complete with illustrated case studies from cutting-edge interdisciplinary research projects. Design and the Digital Humanities offers a unique approach to mastering the fundamental processes, concepts, and techniques critical to both disciplines.

Intellect, 2022

Introduction

• Selling the Value of Design
• The Epistemological Modes of Knowledge Production
• Change is scary
• What expertise looks like

EXERCISES: Meaning

Creating understanding

• Defining DH
• Defining design
• What is Publishable
• Case study 1: how design students define themselves

EXERCISES: Form and text

Misunderstandings

• Terms from DH
• Terms from Design
• Claim Games
• Case study: what’s a book?

EXERCISES: Collections and territories

Meeting points

• Humanities visualization
• Rich Prospect Browsing
• Case studies: DH-based visualizations created by undergraduate design students
• Case studies: Decision Support Systems

EXERCISES: Data visualization and interface design

Working better together: interdisciplinary research in practice

• Developing interdisciplinary researchers
• What is Respectable?
• Project management for interdisciplinary researchers
• Managing people who are sensitive to their surroundings
• Case study: Interdisciplinary research project charter

EXERCISES: Planning

Our Journey Continues

• From the Digital to the Physical
• Design for Peace and Reconciliation
• qCollaborative
• Design Concepts Lab

Final thoughts

EXERCISES: Intellectual territories