Reference
Liu, S., & Almeda, S. G. (2025). Agency Among Agents: Designing with Hypertextual Friction in the Algorithmic Web. Adjunct Proceedings of the 36th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media, 30–34. https://doi.org/10.1145/3720533.3750065
Abstract
Today’s algorithm-driven interfaces, from recommendation feeds to GenAI tools, often prioritize engagement and efficiency at the expense of user agency. As systems take on more decision-making, users have less control over what they see and how meaning or relationships between content are constructed. This paper introduces “Hypertextual Friction,” a conceptual design stance that repositions classical hypertext principles—friction, traceability, and structureas actionable values for reclaiming agency in algorithmically mediated environments. Through a comparative analysis of real-world interfaces—Wikipedia vs. Instagram Explore, and Are.na vs. GenAI image tools—we examine how different systems structure user experience, navigation, and authorship. We show that hypertext systems emphasize provenance, associative thinking, and user-driven meaning-making, while algorithmic systems tend to obscure process and flatten participation. We contribute: (1) a comparative analysis of how interface structures shape agency in user-driven versus agent-driven systems, and (2) a conceptual stance that offers hypertextual values as design commitments for reclaiming agency in an increasingly algorithmic web.
Highlights
We show that hypertext systems emphasize provenance, associative thinking, and user-driven meaning-making, while algorithmic systems tend to obscure process and flatten participation.
connects to ambiguity, an attempt to encourage people to find their own meaning
user-driven versus agent-driven systems
add to glossary
algorithmic feeds and generative systems that anticipate user needs before intent is even articulated
connects (?) to ambiguity point i have made about age of on-life and digital world impacting our perception of everyday world
What if we revisited the friction of hypertext, not with nostalgia, but as a speculative framework for reclaiming agency?
Where algorithmic systems guide users down invisible, pre-optimized paths [36], hypertextual systems foreground connection and deliberateness.
map out the connection to designing friction manifest
A conceptual design stance—“Hypertextual Friction”—that treats friction, traceability, and structure as values for reclaiming agency in hybrid systems, favoring interpretation over prescription and active participation over passive use.
nice definition, glossary?
SPORE combines visual layout, recommendation, and generative tools to support “storybreaking” as a collaborative, interpretive process. Informal deployments revealed that users gravitated toward its associative layout and adapted its friction as a form of creative play. These findings suggest friction and structure can be compelling in practice.
find more
We propose that meaning emerges through juxtaposition; discovery is built, not served.
how can this be aligned with serendipity? can it be aligned?
Wikipedia fosters what researchers have called active wandering [38], enabling serendipity through its intentionally linked structure. Unlike algorithmic systems that prescribe a path, it invites users to forge their own. Ted Nelson famously called this structure “intertwingularity”—the overlapping, nonlinear mesh of ideas that defies simple hierarchy [27]. Even the interface reflects this epistemology: hyperlinks are not just navigational, but meaning-making cues [10][27].
lol
While the interface appears to offer discovery, the experience is tightly personalized.
Users do not navigate across ideas; they scroll. In place of authored structure, Instagram offers associative disassociation content stitched together by unseen algorithms rather than intentional links.
Rather than constructing meaning, users are fed content.
ambiguity!!!
interface mirrors the logic of intertwingularity, enabling nonlinear thinking and meaning-making through a mesh of visible, overlapping connections
love the german
In hybrid systems, friction might take the form of visible forks in content, reflective pauses, or points of editorial choice—gestures that reintroduce agency into the flow.
breaks
Hybrid tools could show source trails and remix histories—letting users retrace or repurpose what they find.
Hybrid systems could extend this by embedding generative outputs into editable canvases or semantic trails—where meaning evolves through interaction.
artefact idea
Agency must be reclaimed not only through explanation, but through the structure of interaction itself.
embed agency at the interface level
Summary
Comparing user-driven (hypertextual) and agent-driven (algorithmic) systems, the authors argue that hypertext supports associative, non-linear thinking and user-led meaning-making, while algorithmic feeds obscure process and flatten participation. They propose “Hypertextual Friction,” a design stance treating friction, traceability and structure as values for reclaiming agency in hybrid systems. They illustrate it with SPORE, a tool combining visual layout with recommendation and generative features. The key move is that agency comes from choosing a path rather than having it prescribed.
Critical analysis
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|
| takes a hybrid approach: accepts that algorithmic systems are here to stay and designs with them rather than pretending they can be avoided | short adjunct/position paper; the argument is mostly conceptual |
| addresses the structure of interaction itself, instead of adding another slow-technology layer that merely slows down or counters existing systems | SPORE evidence comes only from informal deployments, not systematic evaluation |
| offers concrete design gestures (visible forks, reflective pauses, source trails, editable canvases) that can be translated into practice | despite rejecting nostalgia, hypertext is somewhat idealised, Wikipedia’s links and structure are also authored and gatekept |
Relevance to my research
- The meaning-making that hypertext supports aligns with the goals of friction design and with ambiguity as a design resource: in both, interpretation is left to the user rather than prescribed by the system.
- Connects to the onlife: algorithmic and generative systems anticipate needs before intent is even articulated, which may shape how we perceive and act in the everyday, non-digital world too.
- Engelbart and Nelson’s idea that knowledge is constructed, not delivered, and that navigation is authorship. “Discovery is built, not served.”
cool Intertwingularity, Nelson’s term for the belief that all knowledge is deeply interlinked and can not be separated into neat categories
artefact stretchtext, text that expands or contracts on demand, without taking the user to different page
artefact typed links that state what kind of relationship they express such as ‘contradicts’, ‘supports’, instead of only ‘relates to’
Key terms
friction, ambiguity, serendipity, agency, hypertext, traceability
Connections
Discovery is never by chance, Ambiguity as a resource for design