: <p>This paper reports on an experiment which connects document design withdocument theory. Document design is about whatdocuments should do. We use the example of document graphs and of Cosma, a visualization program created during the HyperOtlet research programme, to show how theory can inform design decisions and help conceptualize results. This paper is currently under peer review.</p> <hr/> <section id="document-design-or-information-design" class="level1"> <h1>Document design or information design?</h1> <p><span class="citation" data-cites="findeli2015">Findeli (2015)</span> defines design as diagnostic and prescriptive, an example of “projective” epistemology: designers view the world as a project to realize, rather than an object to know. This definition of design implies that document design is less about whatdocuments <em>are</em> and more about what they <em>should do</em>. This aligns with the evolution of document theory from an ontic view of documents to a functional one, which was pioneered[...]