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Article published In:
Information Visualization
Edited by Marian Dörk and Isabel Meirelles
[Information Design Journal 25:1] 2019
► pp. 28–42

Design as externalization

Enabling research

| Royal College of Art
| Royal College of Art

The article is concerned with a central contribution of designing to information visualization in the digital humanities. The activity is characterized as one of externalization, instantiation in visible or tangible form of ideas. A spectrum of different interpretations of this process in the existing literature is discussed. The arguments are illustrated with recent practical examples from the authors’ own work in designing with a range of cultural organizations. The article concludes with reflections on how projects may best benefit from this work of design, empowering the designer as a co-researcher, alongside the historian, curator or other humanities scholar.

Keywords: data visualization, design methods, design research, prototyping, externalization, digital humanities
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Externalization as self-expression
  • 3.Externalization as cognitive support
  • 4.Externalization as feedback
  • 5.Externalization as conversation
  • 6.Externalization as research
  • 7.Implications
  • Acknowledgements
  • Author queries
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 16 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.25.1.03van
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