What is really being done here and for who? - Visual Eyes is clearly a scholarly project. It's an interesting mix of scholarly product and process, see Andrew Torget's essay on the Texas Slave Project. Torget argues that the Visual Eyes' presentation of Texas Slave Project data (online here) "frees the historian from...restrictions by allowing the user to manipulate multiple sets of data simultaneously, rendering complex visualizations of historical information spread across time that can reveal relationships and historical processes embedded in the datasets which would not otherwise be apparent." In Torget's view, the data visualization is a tool for illustrating relationships while engaged in the study of some historical question. Torget recognizes the centrality of questions in the process of using visualizations. Again from Torget, "Let us imagine there is a historian of slavery, for example, who wishes to understand why slaveholders in nineteenth-century Texas established their plantations in certain parts of the region rather than in others. Using the HistoryBrowser, he or she could take existing census data of slave and slaveholder populations to create a map of where people lived in the region and how those populations changed over the years." In summary, Visual Eyes is a tool for historians, and presumably students of history, to access complex, mostly data-based information in context-rich environments.
Is it about the historian and the designer? I think the design issue is impacted by the designer's intention. Visual Eyes was designed for historians, so we might expect that a certainly level of scholarly complexity has been designed into the system.
Is it done because it can be-- Is it an example of just longing for something aesthetic? I wonder what the aesthetic is for Visual Eyes? Noah Illinsky (his blog at http://complexdiagrams.com/) has written that beautiful data visualizations should seek to be aesthetically pleasing, informative, efficient, and novel (Illinsky's chapter is here). Visual eyes is, in my judgment, more than aesthetically pleasing. In fact, we might argue the complexity of the the data presentations overshadows the aesthetic.
Can it amplify student learning? Here is the most difficult question. University students of history can certainly profit from using the projects at Visual Eyes, particularly when that use is drive by well-constructed questions, see http://www.viseyes.org/class.htm for more on how Visual Eyes is being used in university settings. Additional pedagogical structure or scaffold is needed to engage 6-12 students with the resources. What those supports and scaffolds are depend on the pedagogical intent of teachers or the learning needs of students.
Are there any learning goals for this? No overt learning goals are apparent, although the supplementary material makes it clear that all the Visual Eyes projects were created with scholarly inquiry in mind.
Is it designed to amplify student learning and if so what scaffolds and supports are put in place to help students process the information? This is a question that should probably be asked during the design phase. However, we might go about a process of pedagogical backfilling to enable middle and high school students to use the projects. This pedagogical work should involve a process of unpacking goals and objectives for learning, considering prior knowledge and providing additional support where needed, allowing for the development or emergence of questions, and structuring the process of engaging the data with a scaffold such as SCIM-C - http://www.historicalinquiry.com/
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