Reading Assignment - Digital_Humanities - Chapter 1 (Graduates): Qingyu Cai
Chapter one of this book introduces digital humanities as a new field but still emphasizes the importance of humanities. As a designer with experience in spatial and interface design, I am attracted by the part where the author elaborates on the importance of design as an intellectual method in digital humanities. It seems that design serves as a tool to manage the team, shape the arguments, and express the contents in this team project-based process. And such key roles are actually what designers have learned while receiving training. Design is not just a noun but also a verb. We learn not only how to create a design but also design. However, without teamwork with people from diverse backgrounds, we will never know the power of design. And this is what digital humanities has taught us in its process.
Besides, design is essential to this field due to the same ideation process of doing a project. It is common in design projects to do prototyping and versioning, make progress, and find new problems by testing failures, which is also vital for digital humanities. The role of designers can be to help the team assist in these processes regarding skill sets and spiritual support. They know how prototyping works, and more importantly, they see the beauty of failure. The iteration process might seem endless for non-designers, but designers take it for granted because it is what they have kept doing for their entire careers. As mentioned in the chapter, each design opens up new problems and - productively - creates new questions. It is the feature of design to find problems and develop solutions.
By reading this chapter, I would feel expected to explore the digital humanities projects and see what I can contribute to the team as a designer.