“At one time, Ts’ui Pên must have said; ‘I am going into seclusion to write a book,’ and at another, ‘I am retiring to construct a maze.’ Everyone assumed these were separate activities. No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same.” —Jorge Luis Borges, “Garden of the Forking Paths” (1941)
In the next section, “Speculative Making in the Digital Humanities,” I detail my specific usage and interpretation of the terms “Reflective design complements the recent emphasis on critical making2 in the digital humanities: the embodying of ideas or arguments in things. Ian Bogost’s carpentry,3 Wolfgang Ernst’s media archaeology,4 and Bruce Sterling’s design fiction5 are all significant disciplinary touchstones. Part of the human-centered design philosophy of Donald Norman, reflective design foregrounds critical investigation over usability.”6
Reflective design is one concept among many similar others based on the conceptual, hands-on exploration of the material form, and bibliocircuitry, one iteration of this cross-disciplinary practice.