Re: understanding the user experience of ontologies

Dear Paul,

Silvio Peroni has developed two cool tools that greatly assist in the 
understanding and use of OWL ontologies.

    The first is *LODE - the Live Owl Documentation Environment*
    (http://www.essepuntato.it/lode), that automatically extracts
    classes, object properties, data properties, named individuals,
    annotation properties, general axioms and namespace declarations
    from an OWL ontology, and renders them as ordered lists, together
    with their textual definitions, in a human-readable HTML page
    designed for browsing and navigation by means of embedded links.   I
    introduce it
    <http://semanticpublishing.wordpress.com/2011/02/25/using-lode-for-ontology-visualization/>here,
    and there are three conference papers describing it [1 - 3].

    The second is *Graffoo, a Graphical Framework for OWL Ontologies*
    (http://www.essepuntato.it/graffoo), that can be used to present the
    classes, properties and restrictions within OWL ontologies, or
    sub-sections of them, as clear and easy-to-understand diagrams. I
    describe and illustrate it here
    <http://semanticpublishing.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/graffoo-a-graphical-framework-for-owl-ontologies/>.


Both are open source developments that we are keen for people to 
employ.  For further information, Silvio can be contacted at 
<essepuntato@cs.unibo.it <mailto:essepuntato@cs.unibo.it>>

Hope this is helpful.

Kind regards,

David

[1]    Peroni S, Shotton D and Vitali F (2012). Latest developments to 
LODE. In /Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Knowledge 
Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2012)/ (ten Teije A, Völker 
J, Handschuh S, Stuckenschmidt H, d'Aquin M, Nikolov A, Aussenac-Gilles 
N and Hernandez N: Eds.): 417-420. Heidelberg, Germany: 
Springer.doi:10.1007/978-3-642-33876-2_37 
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33876-2_37>.

[2]    Peroni S, Shotton D and Vitali F (2012). The Live OWL 
Documentation Environment: a tool for the automatic generation of 
ontology documentation. In /Proceedings of the 18th International 
Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 
2012)/ (ten Teije A, Völker J, Handschuh S, Stuckenschmidt H, d'Aquin M, 
Nikolov A, Aussenac-Gilles N and Hernandez N: Eds.): 398-412. 
Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-33876-2_35 
<http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33876-2_35>.

[3]    Peroni S, Shotton D and Vitali F (2012). Making ontology 
documentation with LODE. /Proceedings of the Poster & Demo Track of the 
8th International Conference on Semantic Systems (i-Semantics 2012)/. 
Aachen, Germany: Sun SITE Central Europe.Available from 
http://palindrom.es/phd/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/lode_demo_isemantics2012_cr.pdf. 



-- 

Dr David Shotton
Research Data Management and Semantic Publishing Research Group
Department of Zoology, University of Oxford
South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK.
Phone: +44-(0)1865-271193    Skype: davidshotton



On 05/02/2013 15:55, PAUL WARREN wrote:
> There is a need to understand better how people use ontologies and how they can be helped to use them more effectively.
>
> I am asking for 10 minutes of your time to help gain an enhanced insight into how people use ontologies in real applications, the problems they experience, and the scope for improvement in tools and methodologies.  The survey linked to here is designed to gather necessary information to create that enhanced insight.
>
> Completing the survey will take about 10 mins; it is hoped that it will be completed by as many as possible of those who use ontologies.  The results will be made available in the public domain, with all information anonymised and confidentiality maintained.  Anyone who provides an email address as part of the survey response will be sent the survey results.
>
> More information is provided on the survey pages.
>
> Many thanks for your help; I believe it will provide valuable insight to enhance the state-of-the-art in the use of ontologies,
>
> Paul Warren
> Knowledge Media Institute
> Open University, U.K.
>