Knot: an interface for the study of social networks in the humanities

This paper describes the design of Knot, a digital tool for exploring historical social networks, developed within a multidisciplinary research context involving designers, humanities scholars and computer scientists. The goal of the tool is to provide scholars and researchers with an environment for exploring multi-dimensional and heterogeneous data, allowing them to discover and create explicit and implicit relationships between people, places and events. What distinguishes our approach to traditional network exploration and analysis is an emphasis on the construction of the network graph through the visual interface, rather than on its static observation. Knot aims to explore new opportunities for interface design and information visualization within the definition of novel research practices in the humanities, bringing together scholars, HCI, design, and computer science communities.