Critical Design as Theory, Experiment, and Data: A Sociologically-Informed Approach to Visualizing Networks of Loss

In this paper, I develop an online website that assists users in answering the question, What do you need to remove in order to erase [thing] from [your life or society]? through network visualization methods. This project subverts the typical data visualization strategy of working with extant data by encouraging users to produce data, demonstrating how data visualization techniques can constitute a way of thinking and creating rather than just analyzing and representing. However, this tool and its affordances are primarily a case study for a sociological approach to critical design in the Digital Humanities: By critically examining the tool itself (as well as the process that created it), I am able to pose the broader questions of (1) how does the creation of digital tools and projects reflect a theoretical interpretation of the social world and its processes, and (2) how can these interpretations constitute the data of sociological studies? In resolving these questions, I suggest that critical design can be viewed as theory, experiment, and data: designs constitute a social theory, data can be experimentally produced within this social theory, and encouraging reflective design can turn the social theories of design themselves into data.