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We provide a systematic attempt to understand what users really require to build successful ontologies. To do so, we present the insights from an interview study with 15 ontology authors in which we identify the problems reported by authors, and the strategies they employ to solve them. We map the data to a set of design recommendations, which describe how tools can support ontology authoring going forward.
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Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring
ToolsMarkel Vigo, Caroline Jay, Robert Stevens
University of Manchester (UK)
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
CHI 2014, Toronto
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
What is an ontology?
Pneumonia
Lung structure
has_pathological_process
Bacteria Infectious process
has_finding_site
has_causative_agent
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Pneumonia
Lung structure
has_pathological_process
Bacteria Infectious process
has_finding_site
has_causative_agent
1) Domain-specific knowledge
Why is ontology authoring complex?
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Pneumonia
Lung structure
has_pathological_process
BacteriaInfectious process
has_finding_site
has_causative_agent
Pneumocite
has_part
Alveolar macrophage
Cell
Nucleus
Membrane
Lysosome
Mitochondrion
subClassOf
has_part
Source: Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT)
2) Size
Why is ontology authoring complex?
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Source: National Drug File - Reference Terminology
Pneumonia
Lung structure
has_pathological_process
BacteriaInfectious process
has_finding_site
has_causative_agent
CEFTAZIMIDE CEPHALEXIN
may_treat
Drug
subClassOf
ERYTHROMYCIN
3) Semantics, reasoning & inference
Why is ontology authoring complex?
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Pneumonia
Lung structure
has_pathological_process
BacteriaInfectious process
has_finding_site
has_causative_agent
CEFTAZIMIDE CEPHALEXIN
Source: National Drug File - Reference Terminology
may_treat
Drug
subClassOf
ERYTHROMYCIN
Legionella pnemophila
has_type
4) It’s critical
Why is ontology authoring complex?
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
5) Tools have poor usability
Why is ontology authoring complex?
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Why are ontologies relevant and why we need better authoring tools
• Widely used in science, biomed and industry
• Semantics for linked data
• Broader adoption even by amateurs
• Current tools hinder their uptake
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
We interviewed
15 ontology authors
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor sensemaking, exploration and searching
“The first thing would be to start from the top level of genes and just investigate
the hierarchy and try to learn about it” (P1)
- Brief description of the hierarchy
- Summarise the axiomatic complexity
Provide overviews
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor sensemaking, exploration and searching
“If you edit an ontology full-time you get very familiar with it, all of us can drill-
down the ontology and find it quite easily” (P12)
- Bookmarks and shortcuts
- Landmarks
Provide filters
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor sensemaking, exploration and searching
“undoing is very scary [...] you press undo and maybe you already navigated away
from the view [...] and you don’t know what you actually undo so I never use undo,
never!” (P5)
- Give feedback about the consequences of actions
- Provide a history of modifications
Increase situational awareness
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor ontology building
“We had biologists filling out the templates, then we instantiate lots of axioms
with these templates” (P6)
- Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets
- Design templates
Efficient ontology population methods
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor ontology building
“There is so far no available tool but we
do use some ontology mapping tool which is
Bioportal” (P11)
- Mapping and merging capabilities
- Dealing with inconsistencies
Retrieval from external ontologies
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor reasoning, debugging & evaluation
“Every axiom change, every class addition,
every refactor I always run the reasoner.” (P8)
- Incremental reasoning on the background
- Identify complex axioms
Intelligent reasoning
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategiesfor reasoning, debugging & evaluation
“We don’t have a formal mechanism for checking. We rely on the fact that
the ontology is being used” (P14)
- Unit tests
- Competence questions
Evaluation features
Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Conclusions
• Ontology authoring is a fragmented landscape
• Usability issues specific to ontologies
• Authors employ workarounds
• We provide a set of design insights
Markel Vigo, Caroline Jay, Robert Stevens
University of Manchester (UK)
ACM CHI 2014
More info at http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/whatif/
What’s next? Identifying authoring patterns
