How does the manipulation of tangible data make it possible to renew information design research and practice in the field of digital humanities? This article studies a pedagogical experiment in digital humanities made with students in design, on information design and visualization. The interest of this pedagogical experiment was to challenge the digital visual culture of students, linked both to their daily practice of consuming data visualizations, and their graphic and material culture acquired during their training in design. The main objective was to acculturate students to information design by the design of a knowledge mediation tool based on data physicalization, that is to say, a staging of data materialized by tangible objects. The article aims to show that the tangibility and performativity, as specificities of data physicalization, transform the knowledge mediation. Thus, data-physicalization can be used as a learning method to study and practice digital humanities, and relying on experimentations with tangible data can be useful to create the conditions for the students' reappropriation of knowledge through practice.