Abstract
While the hypertext community is deeply rooted in a shared vision of technology for human growth, contemporary research often struggles to translate successful artefacts and system engineering into enduring theoretical contributions. Reviewing and authoring hypertext research frequently reveals a persistent gap: experimental systems are proven to work, yet the deeper "so what?" question remains unaddressed.
This position paper introduces a vademecum for hypertext research, a practical, self-reflective framework designed to help researcher-technologists step outside the role of the mere executioner and adopt the perspective of the critic-philosopher. By mapping self-assessment across the three distinct phases of an idea's development lifecycle (conceptual framing, development, and critique), the vademecum provides actionable prompts to uncover hidden assumptions, discover emerging theories when the rubber meets the road, and evaluate success organically rather than through synthetic, self-fulfilling metrics. As a foundational tool, the vademecum offers a personal perspective on fostering our community through its unique combination of technical ingenuity and rigorous conceptual critique, thereby distinguishing hypertext research from mainstream computer science fields.
1 Introduction – The “So What?” Challenge
Assessing research contributions in computer science is inherently difficult, but the challenge becomes acute when peer-reviewing for hypertext. What is deemed appropriate, or even excellent, for a mainstream computing conference often fails to capture the significance required by the hypertext community. Mainstream venues are often risk-averse, rewarding polished, incremental advancements over novel, less mature ideas. Marginal improvements in performance, optimisation, or engineering efficiency are valid proxies for contribution quality, along with well-established methodologies, predictable paper structures, and community references. In Hypertext, by contrast, we value profound conceptual novelty and systemic vision over the refinement of a status quo. In other words, while other communities pursue internal consolidation, our role is as a crossroad between disciplines, demanding a focus on novelty and change above all else, the result of the creative meeting among different sensibilities, methodologies and vision.
This divergence exists because hypertext is, at its core, an avant-garde discipline. We are not content with iterating but feed on novelty and the relentless critique of established technical patterns. This tension toward the future coexists with our deep historical roots, which serve as the compass for the values we seek for our investigations, rather than an established set of methods, themes, and solutions. Hypertext must be, indeed, understood not as a stagnant class of legacy software, but as a dynamic methodological approach [2], a frame of mind.
Within this paradigm, the act of building systems and running experiments takes on a completely different meaning: we build to stress-test an idea, to make a radical vision tangible, and to create the very conditions necessary to explore a new intellectual space by doing. In the design fields, this strategy would be called a research through design [3], the process of knowledge creation that is possible only through engagement within a design process. As a research community, our designs are, however, both the result and the object of conceptual investigation: we act as customers designing for our vision and granting ourselves the opportunity to learn by doing.
This difference is reflected in the challenge of peer-reviewing for hypertext, which goes beyond being a crossroads of multiple disciplines. The presentation of an elegant system, execution of a flawless technical experiment, and presentation of a solid evaluation often leave the reviewer with a glaring, unaddressed “so what?” question. When technology is stripped of its visionary intent and reduced to mere engineering virtuosity, the true contribution of hypertext is lost. To safeguard this approach, the community needs to cultivate a shared understanding and support newcomers with practical tools to help them translate their idiosyncratic, personal motivations into the rigorous, shared conceptual work that qualifies technical experimentation as hypertext research.
2 Beyond Synthetic Success
A successful technical system is not, in itself, a meaningful result for the hypertext community. In mainstream computer science, user adoption and positive engagement metrics are often treated as objective indicators of value [1]. However, these indicators can be profoundly deceptive as such endeavours are frequently driven by small groups of enthusiastic early adopters, collaborative peers, or students. Personal relationships, researchers’ relatability and localised enthusiasm can easily camouflage a poorly conceived idea into positive feedback. The true value of a hypertext artefact does not reside in shallow user validation or immediate popularity, but in the rigorous philosophical critique of what was actually learned through its creation and what this entails for our shared vision for technology.
The reliance on uncritical feedback loops points to a deeper systemic issue: the danger of de-humanising metrics. When performance, engagement, or optimisation metrics become the primary targets of research evaluation, technology risks create self-fulfilling prophecies. Mainstream digital platforms routinely demonstrate this hazard by engineering toxic architectures that manufacture artificial human needs, bottleneck user agency, and then triumphantly measure their “success” based on the outcomes of bio/cognitive hackings in service to engagement metrics. When research limits its scope to these flawed proxies, it becomes blind and fails to provide alternative visions that challenge foundational assumptions on what is Human and how technology should serve it.
To move past this performative paradigm of validation, the hypertext researcher must deliberately navigate an internal tension, simultaneously inhabiting two distinct and often conflicting roles:
The technologist builder. Pragmatically focused on system logic, implementation details, deployment, engineering challenges, and user engagement, translating visions into viable systems.\
The philosopher/critic observer. Grounded in an auto-ethnographic perspective, consciously watching oneself build, interrogating hidden architectural assumptions, testing and interacting, and continuously assessing what the emerging technology reveals about the vision, its merits and flaws.\
Combining these two roles can be intellectually painful, as researchers are rarely trained to turn the critical lens inward while actively executing an engineering task. Yet, it is precisely this dual perspective that distinguishes the mature hypertext researcher. If user-centred design is the hallmark of Human-Computer Interaction, hypertext is grounded in the problem-framing of the pre-design stage: good thinking, vision, and soundness with the involved phenomena and dynamics. This configures a type of dual-track design process [5], anticipating design to inform development. In hypertext, as in other information system disciplines, however, the design effort is focused on problem framing: building a coherent vision that serves as a guide, theory and an evaluation framework for the solution choices and results. The researcher's Humanities sensibility becomes functional in prioritising positive impact on humans over the optimisation of systems throughout the process.
In a nutshell, validation in hypertext research prioritised disciplined aesthetic judgment over external quantification. The researcher must constantly ask: Does this design feel right? Does it work beautifully (resonate with my human nature)? Does it amplify human capabilities? Even though mathematically challenging, this approach to evaluation can still be methodologically rigorous (when honest) and grounded. The grounding is provided by the continuous self-observation inherent in the dual role of maker and expert critic, which allows the researcher to experience the technology not merely as an abstract tool but as a boundary object that connects the abstract visions to reality. Through this aesthetic tension, the technologist senses precisely where a system yields to mainstream engineering convenience, and where it truly advances an avant-garde agenda: identifying and chasing what is worth pursuing [4].
In this view, commercial adoption, high computational performance, and widespread user engagement are re-contextualised not as the primary compass of the project, but as potential organic by-products of fruitful vision. Success is not a wide user base but the impact of a tangible idea, as this is the role of an avant-garde.
3 Vademecum - A Development Cycle Framework
A vademecum, literally meaning “go with me” is an intimate, practical handbook of reference principles designed to accompany the practitioner during the lived act of creation. Instead of imposing rigid evaluation axes, it is structured around the lifecycle of ideas, offering actionable prompts for self-reflection across three progressive phases. Far from being a breviary of dogmas, it is designed to bypass pitfalls, unmask deceptive proxies, and resist the uncritical parroting of established patterns, establishing a clean foundation for fruitful investigation. Because hypertext research focuses fundamentally on making as an act of inquiry, this process is deeply personal: it cannot be achieved by following a standard script or blindly applying community-sanctioned metrics.
3.1 Phase 1 – Intention & Vision
Ground the research project here, at the absolute inception stage, before a single line of code is written or an architectural diagram is drawn.
3.1.1 Objective. Establish a rigorous conceptual defence against the allure of contemporary technological trends and market-driven hype cycles.
3.1.2 Challenge. Mainstream computer science frequently treats alignment with the latest industry hype cycle as a reliable shortcut to peer validation. Within the hypertext tradition, you must consciously reject the uncritical adoption of these superficial technical movements.
3.1.3 Rationale. This resistance is not born of elitism or technophobia. It is an explicit recognition that mainstream commercial trends are structurally engineered to maximise data extraction, enforce platform captivity, and play safe within optimised engagement patterns—actively degrading rather than fulfilling human potential.
3.1.4 Strategy. Anchor the project entirely in deep-seated human intent rather than popular technical patterns. By doing so, you ensure that the emerging technology remains a deliberate servant to human development and cognitive growth.
3.1.5 Diagnostic Prompts. Pause and critically interrogate your baseline assumptions using the following prompts:
What core dimension of human cognition, capability or growth does this work fundamentally foster?\
If the current technical trend did not exist, how would your system's core architecture and behaviour change to serve this vision?\
What are the assumptions about people's needs, values, capabilities, and priorities behind your vision, and what would happen to your system if any of those are wrong?\
3.2 Phase 2 – Experimental Discovery
Transition from the problem and vision into active execution, navigating the critical space where your theoretical assumptions confront the realities of implementation.
3.2.1 Objective. Treat the development phase not just as software development, but as a deliberate process for real-time conceptual and theoretical discovery.
3.2.2 Challenge. Traditional development reduces system building to the discovery and execution of technical specifications, frequently overlooking non-functional requirements, adoption barriers, and other key human factors. In hypertext research, a theory cannot be fully formed in an empirical vacuum: its true parameters remain obscured until they are forced through the creative friction of building.
3.2.3 Rationale. During construction, your evolving technical system serves as a live boundary object that bridges abstract humanistic ideals and the rigid constraints of computational logic. Every development decision – from database schemas and data routing protocols to interface scoping or state synchronisation – is an unexpected epistemological crossroad.
3.2.4 Strategy. Consciously exploit the constraints of development. As practical limitations force architectural compromises and trade-offs, use those specific friction points to expose and document your own implicit design truths, biases, and structural priorities.
3.2.5 Diagnostic Prompts. Pause after each sprint to evaluate your implementation choices using the following prompts:
Where did computational/architectural constraints force you to deviate from your initial ideals, and what hidden assumptions about user agency, roles, capabilities or knowledge did that friction expose?\
What is the system teaching you about your problem framing that you did not realise when you began, and how does this alter your original intention?\
3.3 Phase 3 – Critique & Self-reflection
Conclude the development cycle by shifting from the builder's pragmatic role to that of the critic, who accounts for the vision that the final result expresses.
3.3.1 Objective. Deploy an auto-ethnographic lens as a user to extract lasting, generalisable conceptual knowledge from your interaction with the produced artefact and as an observer of the design process itself.
3.3.2 Challenge. Mainstream validation models assume a project is a success simply because the software runs stably, achieves baseline performance, or elicits delight from early adopters. You must resist using immediate popularity or engineering stability as indicators of academic worth, and you must foreshadow unexpected side effects and long-term changes your system can foster in users.
3.3.3 Rationale. A project must be interrogated to determine whether it genuinely advanced the community's systemic understanding of human potential, or if it merely achieved an engineering virtuosity justified by a boilerplate engagement-driven evaluation.
3.3.4 Strategy. Look past the surface metrics of user engagement. Evaluate your creation as a lived experiment to discover how the artefact alters human connection, transforms cognitive agency, and challenges the foundational design dogmas of mainstream technology.
3.3.5 Diagnostic Prompts. Confront the systemic utility of your creation by critically answering the following closing prompts:
Stripping away performance metrics and user praise, what fundamental truth about human interaction or cognitive growth has the lived experience of creating this artefact revealed to you?\
What deep-seated technical/interaction pattern did your system successfully break, and how can your auto-ethnographic observations contribute to the community's shared roadmap?\
4 Implications for the Hypertext Community
If accepted, the widespread embedding of self-reflective frameworks into exploratory research carries implications for how we foster the community, mentor, write, and evaluate scholarship, particularly as the broader technological landscape undergoes an unprecedented paradigm shift.
4.1 A High Bar for Future Generations in the Era of AI Automation and Vibe Coding
The democratisation of technical execution through generative artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered the nature of computing research. As AI tools increasingly automate software development – reducing the act of writing code, debugging, and building architectures to a highly commoditised, low-cost activity — the traditional proxy of “proof-of-work” as an indicator of contribution quality has collapsed. In a landscape where a highly functional system can be generated via optimised prompt workflows, a pristine technical artefact is no longer a scarce or defining trait of a well-thought-out work.
Moreover, it would be no longer sufficient for an author to simply quote a value statement, “I love technology for the sake of people,” or to use human-centric rhetoric as a superficial wrapper for standard software engineering. If machines can handle the execution, the human researcher must inject a human soul, and they shall be judged solely by that. The future of our discipline relies on a collective willingness to double down on rigorous conceptual, theoretical, and systemic critique alongside our practical builds. When technical execution becomes trivial, the true research contribution shifts decisively to the clarity of the vision, the depth of self-reflection, and the capacity to steer technology toward meaningful human benefits. Technical ingenuity must now be matched by an equally sophisticated capacity for philosophical investigation.
4.2 Fostering Shared Learning
The rigorous self-critique I advocate is also essential for the communal growth of our network. Because every researcher enters the hypertext community from a uniquely different cultural, philosophical, and personal life journey, we cannot truly learn or build from each other's raw, unexamined intentions alone. Intentions are private and unmapped. Instead, we must openly share the rigorous critique of our theories as they emerge from our technical practices. When researchers publish not just their systems but, more importantly, their experiences as they are, arguing success as well as confessing failures and misguided decisions, they provide the community with a map to navigate similar conceptual terrains. Sharing the critique is what transforms isolated technical experimentation into a collective, cumulative advancement.
4.3 Conclusion
This paper has consolidated this proposition into a Vademecum, not as an abstract manifesto or a call to action far removed from daily practice. This was an execution in its own right, designed to exemplify a vision for a hypertext approach to research. The vademecum maps self-reflection within the broader lifecycle of an idea, from conception to realisation and evaluation. Crucially, as automated generation threatens to flood academic venues (though not hypertext so far) with perfectly polished but conceptually empty works, this proposition aims to preserve the unique, Humanities sensibility of the community. By being practical and accessible, the Vademecum is meant to help current and future generations write better papers that articulate truly profound contributions.
However, the ultimate success of this proposition will not be measured by its adoption, but by its adaptation and engagement with the idea behind it rather than the tool itself. The best possible outcome would be for colleagues to make their own versions of the vademecums and share them through their contributions, to guide us all along their visionary explorations through the choppy waters ahead.
Source
Imported from ACM’s structured HTML source. ACM Reference Format: Alessio Antonini. 2026. Hypertext Research Vademecum: Translating Experimental Systems into Conceptual Contributions. In 37th ACM Conference on Hypertext (HT '26), September 14--18, 2026, London, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA 4 Pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3800935.3830881
References
[1] Alessio Antonini. 2023. Positive by Design: The Next Big Challenge in Rethinking Media as Agents?. In Proceedings of the 34th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media: The Humanity Within (Rome, Italy) (HT ’23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 40, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3603163.3609068
[2] Claus Atzenbeck and Peter J. Nürnberg. 2019. Hypertext as Method. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media: Tear Down The Wall (Hof, Germany) (HT ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 29–38. https://doi.org/10.1145/3342220.3343669
[3] Christopher Frayling. 1994. Research in art and design (Royal College of Art Research Papers, vol 1, no 1, 1993/4). (1994).
[4] Charles Sanders Peirce. 1997. Pragmatism as a principle and method of right thinking: The 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. Suny Press.
[5] Desirée Sy. 2007. Adapting usability investigations for agile user-centered design. Journal of usability Studies 2, 3 (2007), 112–132.
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