Conservative by design: epistemic limits in Digital Humanities visualisation practices

Information visualisation is widely employed in the Digital Humanities (DH), supporting dissemination, research, and access to digital cultural collections. However, few studies survey DH visualisation practices offering in-depth discussion and qualitative insights into specific design choices, while quantitative findings are typically limited to aggregated scales (article-, project-, or interface-level analysis). This contribution builds on a previous survey of 186 DH web projects to advance the field by introducing a finer-grained perspective centred on 587 visualisation-interaction units. By analysing the interplay of visualisation and interaction techniques across narrative and non-narrative contexts, we identify conservative patterns in design. Our findings suggest that DH visualisation practices prioritise simple, familiar, and convenient visualisation and interaction choices, thereby limiting diversification, interpretive richness, and effective multi-perspective disclosures. Similarly, narrative settings remain underexploited, frequently built on ready-made solutions, and rarely operate in symbiosis with more explorative, non-narrative views. We conclude that infrastructural constraints shape DH visualisations more than interpretive aims, advocating for future research targeting interpretive depth and visualisation designs that foreground epistemic value.