Design, Digital Humanities, and Information Visualization for Cultural Heritage

In this essay, we are interested in investigating some of the possible relations between design and digital humanities. In particular, we analyze the contribution that communication and interface design can bring to digital humanities. In a scene currently characterized by a heterogeneous set of activities and humanistic, technological, and cultural studies, the involvement of design seems confined to the development of digital instruments in accessing, exploring, and manipulating cultural data. How can design and the humanities work in an interdisciplinary way in order to shape new digital means to explore humanistic content? This essay presents four case studies (three of them developed by the authors), each of which suggests some methods and tools focused on the interdisciplinary relationships of scholars. The findings are both models of collaboration and models of digital architecture (data visualization) and showcase applied digital interactive platforms that present several paths to discovering different levels of content in the fields of art, psychology, literature, and history. In conclusion, this essay presents a manifesto focusing on ten points of virtuous relation between design humanities and the field of information visualization.