UI and UX Design for Digital Humanities
The design of a digital tool, such as a database or dictionary, does more than simply provide access to information, it also guides interpretation. This resource explores this dynamic through the lens of user experience (UX). The first part will review several practical methods for improving the usability of scholarly digital resources. The second part will adopt a more critical perspective, asking how interface design itself can be understood as a form of scholarly argument that influences research outcomes. Finally, the talk seeks to connect the practical work of building digital tools with a necessary critical reflection on their impact.
This presentation is part of the Digital Humanities After Hours lecture series, hosted by the Centre for Digital Humanities and Arts (DARIAH-IS/CDHA, https://www.mshl.is) in Autumn 2025.
Learning Outcomes
After studying the resource, learners should be able to:
- evaluate core UX/UI design principles and usability challenges specific to digital humanities research platforms and manuscript catalogs;
- identify effective strategies for balancing rich, complex domain metadata with intuitive interface design to reduce user friction;
- analyze how user-centered design and IIIF interoperability improve research workflows in digital annotation, manuscript collation and archival search;
- apply human-centered design frameworks when planning or auditing digital heritage software and edition pipelines.
