Digital Bricolage: Design Speculations for Embodied Approaches to Digitized Print-based Cultural Collections

2025-12-19

AI Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the necessity of digital library services while revealing a critical gap: mainstream digital platforms neglect the materiality of print artifacts and the epistemic value of embodied cognition. This study introduces *Digital Bricolage*—a design philosophy that reimagines digital interfaces as sites for tactile engagement, physical manipulation, and serendipitous exploration of printed materials. Employing qualitative methods—including design fiction, interdisciplinary workshops, expert reflection, and situated prototyping—we investigate how embodied interaction can be reintegrated into digital library systems. Our findings identify concrete opportunities for embodied interface design, advocating a paradigm shift from static browsing to dynamic, haptic-enabled interaction models that support touching, rearranging, and reconstructing. The work contributes both theoretical grounding and practical design pathways for developing post-pandemic digital humanities infrastructures that cohesively integrate remote access with tangible, embodied experience.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Intelligent Robots: Embodied AI

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Web for democratic and emancipatory futures
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health

Abstract

COVID-related closures of public and academic libraries have underlined the importance of online platforms that provide access to digitized print-based collections. However, they also have highlighted the value of in-person handling of print artefacts for sensing and making sense of them. How do existing dominant digital platforms invite and/or discourage embodied forms of exploration and sense-making? What opportunities for embodied experience might we discover if we embrace the material qualities of print-based collections when designing interfaces for digital access? In this paper, we present findings from a speculative exercise where we invited creative professionals and experts in curating and handling access to collections to reflect on existing approaches to digitized print-based collections and to speculate about alternative design opportunities and modes of engagement. We argue for digital bricolage-a design approach that values working with materials that are "on hand" and embracing our ability to "handle" them in ways that foster both casual and curious exploration.

Problem

• Explores how digital platforms affect embodied exploration of digitized print collections.
• Investigates design opportunities for material-based interfaces in digital access.
• Proposes digital bricolage to enhance casual and curious engagement with collections.

Innovation

• Digital bricolage approach using on-hand materials
• Speculative design for embodied digital access to collections
• Fosters casual and curious exploration through handling