History 513 2007-08 11. Aesthetics, Interfaces and Visualization

28 Nov 2007

When people begin to think of the problems associated with putting historical sources and interpretations online, they are often concerned with how things will look. Aesthetics play an important role understanding and usability, so it is important to keep them in mind. A more flexible approach is to divorce form and content, and to let people or machines create alternative visualizations of underlying information.

Cohen, Daniel J. “It’s About Russia,” Dancohen.org (6 Mar 2007)

Cohen, Daniel J. and Roy Rosenzweig. “Designing for the History Web,” Digital History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2005.

Farid, Hany. “Digital Tampering in the Media, Politics and Law.”

IBM. “History Flow: How It Works” and “History Flow: Gallery” (2003).

Viégas, Fernanda B., Martin Wattenberg and Kushal Dave. “Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with History Flow Visualizations,” CHI 2004.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. “‘So the Colors Cover the Wires’: Interface, Aesthetics, and Usability,” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.

Petrik, Paula. “Top Ten Mistakes in Academic Web Design,” History Computer Review (May 2000).

Turkel, William J. “How To: Do Simple Visualizations,” Digital History Hacks (15 Mar 2007).

Easy. Click survey. Philipp Lenssen created a simple web application that allows users to click on a painting and then see where other users clicked on the same image. Try it yourself, and then study the aggregate pattern of responses. Can you think of a way to use a similar program to collect useful information in a public history context?

Easy. Many Eyes. Try making your own Many Eyes visualization and write a blog post about it.