Visualization is the new knowing. From big data to complex processes, visualization tools and data walls are deployed for discovering knowledge and representing it back to others. The tools, however, are not accessible to most scholars, especially humanists who are trained to work with text. The Visual Matters project takes a speculative design approach to prototyping alternative visualization environments that challenge ideas about the surveillance of data. We do this by adapting an existing text analysis environment, Voyant Tools (voyant-tools.org), so that it can be used in new ways by textual scholars to learn through the graphical. In this paper we will discuss:
● Significance and Methodology: We will outline the speculative design approach of prototyping that we have taken and why we think it is important.
● Auditing Voyant: We will discuss how we audited how Voyant works (or not) on data walls and touch tables.
● Book Map: We will demonstrate a first working speculative design called the Book Map.
● Prototypes: We will discuss two sketches for future research and development.
● Conclusion: We will end with a few thoughts on visualization, ubiquitous screens and
knowledge.