1.
Towards Dynamic and Smart Content
Theresa Grotendorst
TEKOM Europe Roadshow Wien 2014
Semantic Technologies for Adaptive Technical Documentation

2.
Towards Dynamic and Smart Content
- The past and the future
- Content in context - How does a good user experience look like?
- From Structured Content to Smart Content
- Using semantics to enhance content
- From DITA to Linked Data
- Use Cases

3.
The Future is NOW
Past v.s.
Future
Limited screens & devices Unlimited screens & devices
Content is limited to a specific purpose Content adapts to context automatically
Standardized content experience Personalized and tailored content experience
Not scalable, linear content production Dynamically content publishing on-demand
Content is only interpretable by humans Content is interpreted and processed by machines

4.
What Web Browser? - The Internet of Things
Wearables Augmented Reality
Smart Home
Smart Devices
Virtual Reality

5.
What’s good technical documentation?
It is not only the information provided itself, but rather
a contextual and user-oriented "help-experience",
that adapts dynamically
to the specific needs
of the user.
„People remember experiences, not content.“

6.
User Centric Technical Documentation
„one size fits all“ vs. contextual/tailored content
targeting an audience vs. targeting a single individual user

7.
Content in Context
How does a good user experience look like?
Scenario:
Peter and his friend are on a motorbike trip through Scotland.
It’s 9 pm in the evening when Peter has a Motorcycle breakdown.
It’s getting dark..

8.
Content in Context
Providing the right information
Detailed enough without too much extra information
Limited set of relevant links
Adaptive to device & context of situation:
- Where am I?
- What do I need to do?
- What information would solve the need?
- …

9.
Content in Context
Peter searches for "fixing clutch" on Google
Google finds lot of content containing the letters C-L-U-T-C-H,
but what content is relevant?
Clutch, an American rock band
Clutch, a women's handbag
Motorcycle's Clutch
Clutch, what Clutch?

10.
Content in Context
Peter searches for "fixing clutch" on Google
If Peter is lucky he will find an one-fits-all
standardized tutorial/ manual/
technical documentation on
how to fix a clutch

11.
Content in Context
Peter searches for "fixing clutch" on Google
OR a landing page that is published
dynamically and adjusts to his needs
based on the facts we know:
- Search-term („fixing clutch“)
- Current location (Highway rest stop)
- Time (9 pm)
- …

12.
Content in Context
It shows
- local emergency number
- a step-by-step instruction on how
to fix a broken clutch (adjustable
to Motorcycle Model/Type)
- tips on how to secure an accident
scene in Scotland
- List of next service stations in
< 2 kilometers distance
- List of nearby hotels & BnB
(because it's at night and the
stations are probably closed)
- Nearby spare part service
order form

13.
What users want … Implication for Technical Content
Easily accessible,
available anytime anywhere
Highly relevant,
easily consumable
Immediately actionable
Personalized based on
context of situation
Always up-to-date
and interactive
Multichannel, multi-screen
publishing
Detailed enough without too
much extra information
Clear & consistent guidance
for desired results
User context & pattern analysis,
content optimization / adaptation
Automatically updated,
dynamically published

14.
What machines want … Implication for Technical Content
Content that that can
easily processed by
machines
Content that that can
be interpreted by
machines
Content that is adaptive
to the technology /
platform / device
Rich metadata, highly
structured, granular at the
appropriate level
Semantic enhancement /
encoding the meaning of the
content in a form that can be
interpreted by machines
Responsive content that is
dynamically published, not
only responsive design

15.
Smart Content is…
structurally & semantically rich
adaptive & dynamically published

16.
Content Evolution
Semantic
meaning
Highly automated
Logical
structure
Flat text
Unstructured
Content
Consumed
by Humans
Structured"
Content
Consumed by Humans
Organized & Displayed
by Machines
Manual Partially
Smart
Content
Consumed by Humans,
Organized, Displayed,
& Interpreted
by Machines
High value,
Multipurpose
Content
Medium value,
Repurposed
Content
Lower value,
Specific Use
Content
scalability "
of process
Richness of markup
http://gilbane.com/2009/11/what-is-smart-content/

17.
Content Evolution
Semantic
meaning
Highly automated
Logical
structure
Flat text
Unstructured
Content
Consumed
by Humans
Structured"
Content
Consumed by Humans
Organized & Displayed
by Machines
Manual Partially
Smart
Content
Consumed by Humans,
Organized, Displayed,
& Interpreted
by Machines
High value,
Multipurpose
Content
Medium value,
Repurposed
Content
Lower value,
Specific Use
Content
scalability "
of process
Richness of markup
http://gilbane.com/2009/11/what-is-smart-content/

18.
Structured Authoring with DITA
Topic Oriented XML Data Model for Authoring and Publishing
!
Core DITA Topic Types:
– Concept
– Task
– Reference
– and more

19.
Structured Authoring with DITA
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/8.0/help.html?content=Chap22-Structured-Authoring-using-DITA_06.html

20.
What’s missing?
A way for representing knowledge, to add meaning to content
to go beyond tagging
parts of the content with
random defined tags
not interpretable
by machines
!
!
„Dynamic responsiveness can only be realized when the surrounding
infrastructure of the content can ‘understand’ the situational context.“

21.
Using Semantics to enhance content
Why semantics?
People understand… Machines don’t.

22.
What is meaning?
A piece of information is really only defined by
what it's related to, and how it's related.
There really is little else to meaning.
The structure is everything.
- Tim Berners-Lee
Meaning is all about context, it‘s about how information is related.

23.
Linked Data
Publishing structured data so that it can be
interlinked and become more useful.
This enables data from different sources
to be connected and queried.

24.
http://wikipedia.org/Spain http://wikipedia.org/
Madrid
hyperlink
Linked Data

25.
http://wikipedia.org/Spain http://wikipedia.org/
Madrid
has capital city
Linked Data

26.
It’s no new world
Semantics are already in place..

27.
It’s no new world
Semantics are already in place..

28.
Linked Open Data
Creadit: Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0

29.
"People can't share knowledge if they don't speak a common language."
Machines neither.
Ontologies

30.
Ontologies
http://wikipedia.org/Spain http://wikipedia.org/
Madrid
has capital city
Country City
Tripel
• The simplest data structure of an ontology is a triple
• All triples follow a very simple scheme
• subject (URI) - predicate (URI) - Property / value (URI / literal)
• knowledge is modeled as a large number of triplets
forming a semantic graph

31.
"People can't share knowledge if they don't speak a common language."
Machines neither.
Ontologies

32.
Ontologies
• Ontologies encode the meaning of the content in a form that
can be interpreted by machines
• implicit information can be derived automatically from explicit information
• enables machine „reasoning“ - deriving facts that are not expressed
in the ontology or in knowledge base explicitly.
Define…
!
• classes
• upper and lower classes
• Inheritance of information / features
• instances
• and possible relations
between instances
• …

33.
Ontologies
Ontology Search LOV (lov.okfn.org/)

34.
From structured Content o Smart Content
Semantic
meaning
Highly automated
Logical
structure
Flat text
Unstructured
Content
Consumed
by Humans
Structured"
Content
Consumed by Humans
Organized & Displayed
by Machines
Manual Partially
Smart
Content
Consumed by Humans,
Organized, Displayed,
& Interpreted
by Machines
High value,
Multipurpose
Content
Medium value,
Repurposed
Content
Lower value,
Specific Use
Content
scalability "
of process
Richness of markup
http://gilbane.com/2009/11/what-is-smart-content/

35.
From DITA to Linked Data
The DITA RDF project by Colin Maudry
More Details:
Twitter: @CMaudry
http://purl.org/dita/ditardf-project

36.
From DITA to Linked Data
Why RDF?
• RDF is efficient storage and linking mechanism
• It stores facts about DITA topics, which are used to:
– Link internal and external content, create a network of knowledge
– Derive other facts (Enables Inferencing)
– Provide higher quality search results
– Semantic Links create a network of Knowledge
!
!
RDF compliments DITA !
Turns it into a Semantically Linked DITA

37.
DITA RDF Ontology
by Colin Maudry
http://bit.ly/DitaRdfLucidChart

38.
Semantic Technologies in Action
Use Cases
VW
Contextual Search for Volkswagen and the Automotive Industry
Renault
Semantic Web Technologies in Automotive Repair and Diagnostic
Audi
How Ontologies and Rules Help to Advance Automobile Development

39.
Use Case - VW
Contextual Search for Volkswagen and the Automotive Industry
„Whereas previously searches were syntactic,
based on keywords and phrases, across
unstructured and meaningless content (in the
eyes of a search engine), we have moved to
a model of semantics where meaning and
aggregation can be derived and applied.“
More Details: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/Volkswagen/

40.
Use Case - Renault
Semantic Web Technologies in Automotive Repair and Diagnostic
„The goal being to show that, rather than having
all of the procedures written in manuals as they
are today, an engine could compute them on the
fly, in a way that minimizes the cost of diagnostic.“
More Details: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/Renault/

41.
Use Case - Audi
How Ontologies and Rules Help to Advance Automobile Development
More Details: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/Audi/

42.
Semantics in the Content Value Chain
Content Acquisition
Content pooling, storage and integration of internal & external content sources
Content Editing
Content enrichment, semantic analysis, adaptation and linking of content
Content Distribution
Provision of machine-readable / semantic interoperable content and metadata
Content Consumption
Improved findability & contextualisation of content, dynamic publishing

43.
Keep the conversation going…
Theresa Grotendorst
Twitter: @2welten