Towards a usable group editor for ontologies

Abstract

Ontologies represent a shared understanding of some domain of interest. Therefore, tools to develop ontologies have to support this sharing in some way. However, current tools lack support of this important aspect, if they tackle it at all. Beyond this, each interactive system cannot be limited to its utility but must also make sure that this is provided in a usable way. However, current ontology editors mostly make the impression of research prototypes, thus not caring too much about this aspect. These two problems are crucial: If we don't support collaborative ontology development, produced ontologies will always lack being product of a social process. Also if the tool support lacks usability, the ontology engineering community cannot expect to spread their ideas to a wider non-expert audience. Therefore the PhD thesis in process tries to tackle these problems and to advance the state of the art. It combines these two aspects as they intervene with each other thus making an integrated approach more promising. The improvements will be thoroughly evaluated with regard to both utility and usability. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.