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.

1. Design Insights for the Next Wave
Ontology Authoring Tools
Markel Vigo, Caroline Jay, Robert Stevens
University of Manchester (UK)
@markelvigo
www.markelvigo.info
markel.vigo@manchester.ac.uk
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
CHI 2014, Toronto

2. 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

3. 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?

4. 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
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?

5. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Source: National Drug File - Reference Terminology
Pneumonia
Lung structure
has_pathological_process
Bacteria
Infectious
process
has_finding_site
has_causative_agent
CEFTAZIMIDE CEPHALEXIN
may_treat
Drug
subClassOf
ERYTHROMYCIN
3) Semantics, reasoning &
inference
Why is ontology authoring complex?

6. 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
CEFTAZIMIDE CEPHALEXIN
Source: National Drug File - Reference Terminology
may_treat
Drug
subClassOf
ERYTHROMYCIN
Legionella
pnemophila
has_typ
e
4) It’s critical
Why is ontology authoring complex?

7. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
5) Tools have poor usability
Why is ontology authoring
complex?

8. 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

9. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
We interviewed
15 ontology authors

10. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

11. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

12. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

13. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

14. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

15. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

16. Design Insights for the Next Wave Ontology Authoring Tools ACM CHI 2014
Reported strategies
for 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

17. 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

18. Markel Vigo, Caroline Jay, Robert Stevens
University of Manchester (UK)
ACM CHI 2014
More info at http://owl.cs.manchester.ac.uk/whatif/
@markelvigo
markel.vigo@manchester.ac.uk
www.markelvigo.info
What’s next?
Identifying authoring patterns