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 that might otherwise be internal to the minds of the designer and other participants. A spectrum of different interpretations of this process in the existing literature is discussed, focusing on early attempts to theorize designing as a means of creating new knowledge, and especially the ways in which that new knowledge contributes to defining or redefining the question or problem to be addressed. The arguments are illustrated with recent practical examples from the authors’ own work in designing with a range of cultural organizations, museums and archives. 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.

中文翻译：

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作为外化的设计

本文关注设计对数字人文学科中信息可视化的核心贡献。该活动的特点是一种外化，以可见或有形的思想形式实例化，否则这些思想可能是设计师和其他参与者内心的想法。讨论了现有文献中对这一过程的一系列不同解释，重点是将设计理论化为创造新知识的一种手段的早期尝试，尤其是新知识有助于定义或重新定义要解决的问题或问题的方式。解决。这些论点通过作者自己在与一系列文化组织、博物馆和档案馆进行设计的工作中最近的实际例子来说明。