After the Montreal workshop we focussed on the classic close reading scenario with an emphasis on interpretation because it can be considered the one to which 3DH postulates apply the most, so we wanted to make sure we cover that first: Exploration of free annotations to sharpen the literary research question.

Developing an early prototype as a proof-of-concept for this scenario first would make it easier to transfer interface principles to the other scenarios, so we reasoned. Over the course of the last months we chose a text we deemed appropriate for the prototype and for the intended audience and populated the scenario with real data. The text we wanted to annotate needed to fulfill some basic requirements: It should be well-known, so people can relate to it. It should be complex enough, so different paths of interpretation can be pursued and it should be short enough, so people can actually read the text without spending too much time, if they want to. It should also be long enough, so visualization as a method of getting an overview really makes sense. We picked the short story In der Strafkolonie von Franz Kafka.

For this short story we created over 600 annotations in 19 different interpretation categories in Catma. In the next step we exported our Catma annotations as JSON and built a web-based demonstrator with Javascript and D3 that shows the most important interactions of the concept.

The main principles of our concept are the tripartition of the interface and the representation of annotations as glyphs. So, while we clung to the idea of glyphs (mentioned in the last article), we have abandoned the idea of a strict spatial separation between the two activity complexes research and argument. We came to the conclusion that scholarly activity is better represented by three adjustable spaces text, canvas and argument.

Here text is simply the part of the interface, where our research text can be read and annotated. For each annotation a glyph is created on the canvas in the middle of the interface. We can sort these glyphs, structure them according to different criteria and draw connections between individual or groups of glyphs. Scholars can save multiple canvasses each of them highlighting a particular aspect of the text. In the argument space on the right side of the interface these canvasses can be combined and arranged to form an argument.

Since this year’s topic of the DHd2018 conference was critical perspectives on digital humanities, our contribution put an emphasis on our design process and the accompanying design-based critical perspective we have applied in the process. We talked about how we incorporated the four methods scenarios, wireframes, prototyping and design reviews into our process and how these helped us to gain new insights and arrive at the current state of design.

Here’s a link to the early prototype that allows you to explore the interaction between annotations and glyphs:

Prototype

You can find our slides here:

Slides

These two videos show the interplay between the three parts of the interface:

Over the span of two and a half days we had an intense and productive workshop that had the goal of refining and reifying the three concepts we had developed so far over the course of the last weeks. Springboards for this process were on the one hand our four conceptual 3DH postulates: 2-way-screen, parallax, qualitative and discursive, on the other hand reflections about supporting the process of interpretation in digital tools. We specifically discussed the relevance of the article “Thinking about interpretation: Pliny and scholarship in the humanities” by John Bradley.

What is intriguing in the software “Pliny” described by Bradley, is, that scholars are very not bound in the way they organize their notes and annotations, there is no need to assign distinct categories or relations to them. Instead, these can be organized on a plane and emerging structures becoming apparent can be inscribed by encapsulating them in boxes, when the interpretation progresses.

This appears to be a way of modelling interpretative data that takes into consideration methods scholars have been using in the analog world, however, also exceeds that and opens up new possibilities enabled by the digital (in terms of interaction with and visualization of data), an approach that seems very much related to the goals of the 3DH project as well.

In our design process so far we have based our concepts on real-world scenarios fed by experiences of literature scholars in research projects and arrived at similar conclusions as Bradley: It seems counterintuitive for scholars to force them to apply structure to their annotations when they start with their process. Relations between and qualitative statements about annotations often can only be made when the process has progressed.

When we discussed the wireframes in the workshop we realized that we can differentiate two different environments or spaces of literary scholarly work: Johanna called this research and argument space. While we define typical descriptive acts of the scholarly process like annotating, collecting and commenting as research activities, we consider tasks like grouping, ordering and organizing as interpretative or at later stages  argumentative activities. Usually scholars switch between activities of either of the modes perpetually.

Interplay between research environment and argument environment (by Johanna Drucker)

We understood that this circumstance has to be supported by the interface much more deliberately. Thus, for the next steps in the design process we will focus on the representation of and interaction between these spaces in the interface. What would an interface look like that supports continuous switching between these mentioned activities?

In the discussion we came up with the concept of a semantic plane that might allow us to bring these two spaces together. While we would produce annotations in the research phase that would be represented as glyphs on the plane, in the argument phase we would position and manipulate these glyphs to assign meaning to them and create  arguments that we later can publish.

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We are halfway through our lecture period by now and since our first co-creation workshop in Potsdam at the end of April a lot has happened.

The concept sketches that were created by our five student groups during the first workshop were elaborated on in preparation for the next exchange between Hamburg and Potsdam.

On May 10th, Marian Dörk and I, together with the Potsdam interface design students, visited Chris Meister, Rabea Kleymann and the other members of the team to join Chris’ seminar and the accompanying exercise.

In the seminar Chris gave an introduction to the collaborative annotation tool Catma and explained to the Potsdam students, how you would use the tool with a certain literary question in mind. This introduction was meant to serve as a primer to Catma on the one hand, but also as an insight into the literary scholar’s process. Since the Potsdam students are supposed to base their visualizations on real data, i.e. narratological annotations produced in Catma, we deemed it necessary to make them comfortable with the process and the tools. The annotations they will eventually use, will be produced and made available to them by the Hamburg students via Catma.

In the exercise the interface design students presented their refined concepts in front of the Hamburg students and Chris Meister’s team. The concepts were quite diverse, in terms of narratological questions they were supposed to address, as well as media, technology and design. The images depicted below give an impression.

Sketches from short presentation in Hamburg

The predominant issues addressed with the concepts were, among others: narrative levels, advanced text search, narrative polarities and relations between objects, characters and parts of the text. After each presentation the literary scholars gave feedback on the projects. In the following three weeks the students had time to continue working on their concepts, before the two student groups from Hamburg and Potsdam got together again.

On May 31st our second co-creation workshop took place at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. The goal of this workshop was to sharpen the students’ concepts with respect to their ability to help answering narratological questions. In the first part of the workshop the student groups presented their current status followed each by a short discussion. In the second part all of the interface design student groups in Potsdam were assigned one or more students or researchers from Hamburg and worked on reifying their concepts. This session was also meant as a chance for the interface design students to ask questions regarding narratological analysis that they had collected over the past weeks.

In the weeks before there had been some rearrangements within the groups and some conceptual reorientations. At the moment there are six groups and their concepts are summarized in the following.

Storylines

Idea of this concept is to mark frame narratives and embedded narratives in the text and visualize their nesting on different levels of detail. These representations will be combined with contentual information, so viewers are informed about the interplay between structure and content.

Narrative Levels

Narrative levels concept

In this circular visualization ring segments represent narrative levels of different order. In the center different relations between levels are visualized, like for example, character networks or the duration and frequency of certain events.

Manual Topic Modeling

Manual topic modeling tool concept

The students developed a tool that let’s you search for the occurrence of words and let’s you manually define topics by putting words together. The distribution of these words can then be visualized. The group is currently looking into other text analysis features that might be helpful for narratological analysis.

Influences

The group wants to visualize influences on the protagonist of a novel. From a narratological perspective it could be interesting to analyze the development of the characterization of the protagonist over the course of the novel. The next step for the group will be to collect all text passages that characterize the protagonist and develop a suitable metric that can be visualized to represent the characterization. In a further step this could be related to the context surrounding a characterizing passage.

Nodes

Nodes concept

In this concept the attraction and repulsion between different entities (characters, objects, text fragments, for example) in the text is visualized in a VR environment (Google Cardboard). Attributes that influence the degree of attraction or repulsion are, for example, frequency or proximity in the text. Different entities can be pinned to get an impression, how they relate to other entities. This way it becomes possible to assume the perspective of a particular entity.

Narratological Cards

Narratological cards concept

In this concept a set of visual modules allows users to analyze a narrative in a physical way by putting together cards that represent different narratological features, like narrators or narrative levels, their position in the narrative and their interconnections.

Our hope is that this close collaboration between the two student groups over the whole course of the semester continues in such a fruitful way and will eventually lead to visualization tools that are truly user-centered and oriented towards the needs of narratologists.

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