TGVizTab: An ontology visualisation extension for Protégé

Ontologies are gaining a lot of interest and many are being developed to provide a variety of knowledge services. There is an increasing need for tools to graphically and in-teractively visualise such modelling structures to enhance their clarification, verification and analysis. Protégé 2000 is one of the most popular ontology modelling tools currently available. This paper introduces TGVizTab; a new Protégé plugin based on TouchGraph technology to graphically visualise Protégé?s ontologies

Applying a User-centred Approach to Interactive Visualization Design

Analysing users in their context of work and finding out how and why they use different information resources is essential to provide interactive visualisation systems that match their goals and needs. Designers should actively involve the intended users throughout the whole process. This chapter presents a user-centered approach for the design of interactive visualisation systems. We describe three phases of the iterative visualisation design process: the early envisioning phase, the global specification hase, and the detailed specification phase. The whole design cycle is repeated until some criterion of success is reached. We discuss different techniques for the analysis of users, their tasks and domain. Subsequently, the design of prototypes and evaluation methods in visualisation practice are presented. Finally, we discuss the practical challenges in design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation environments. Our own case studies and those of others are used throughout the whole chapter to illustrate various approaches

Knowledge Discovery in Virtual Worlds Usage Data: approaching Web Mining concepts to 3D Virtual Environments

[EN] This paper examines the relationships between Web and Virtual Worlds, and how these relationships can be used to approach concepts of knowledge discovery from Web Mining to 3D environments, such as Virtual Worlds. Also it will explain how to track information of usage data for knowledge discovery and what goals can be planned for this process. Every theoretical concept will be shown with examples, including the usage options to collect, data input to the entire process, relevant information extraction from raw data, techniques to discover knowledge and several considerations to decide and represent what knowledge is useful for the user. Based on these concepts a framework is presented in which, by comparison and approach to Web Usage Mining, may be defined an entire process of Knowledge Discovery and Data Analysis

Methodological approaches and techniques for designing ontologies in information systems requirements engineering

Programa doutoral em Information Systems and TechnologyThe way we interact with the world around us is changing as new challenges arise, embracing innovative business models, rethinking the organization and processes to maximize results, and evolving change management. Currently, and considering the projects executed, the methodologies used do not fully respond to the companies' needs. On the one hand, organizations are not familiar with the languages used in Information Systems, and on the other hand, they are often unable to validate requirements or business models. These are some of the difficulties encountered that lead us to think about formulating a new approach. Thus, the state of the art presented in this paper includes a study of the models involved in the software development process, where traditional methods and the rivalry of agile methods are present. In addition, a survey is made about Ontologies and what methods exist to conceive, transform, and represent them. Thus, after analyzing some of the various possibilities currently available, we began the process of evolving a method and developing an approach that would allow us to design ontologies. The method we evolved and adapted will allow us to derive terminologies from a specific domain, aggregating them in order to facilitate the construction of a catalog of terminologies. Next, the definition of an approach to designing ontologies will allow the construction of a domain-specific ontology. This approach allows in the first instance to integrate and store the data from different information systems of a given organization. In a second instance, the rules for mapping and building the ontology database are defined. Finally, a technological architecture is also proposed that will allow the mapping of an ontology through the construction of complex networks, allowing mapping and relating terminologies. This doctoral work encompasses numerous Research & Development (R&D) projects belonging to different domains such as Software Industry, Textile Industry, Robotic Industry and Smart Cities. Finally, a critical and descriptive analysis of the work done is performed, and we also point out perspectives for possible future work.A forma como interagimos com o mundo à nossa volta está a mudar à medida que novos desafios surgem, abraçando modelos empresariais inovadores, repensando a organização e os processos para maximizar os resultados, e evoluindo a gestão da mudança. Atualmente, e considerando os projetos executados, as metodologias utilizadas não respondem na totalidade às necessidades das empresas. Por um lado, as organizações não estão familiarizadas com as linguagens utilizadas nos Sistemas de Informação, por outro lado, são muitas vezes incapazes de validar requisitos ou modelos de negócio. Estas são algumas das dificuldades encontradas que nos levam a pensar na formulação de uma nova abordagem. Assim, o estado da arte apresentado neste documento inclui um estudo dos modelos envolvidos no processo de desenvolvimento de software, onde os métodos tradicionais e a rivalidade de métodos ágeis estão presentes. Além disso, é efetuado um levantamento sobre Ontologias e quais os métodos existentes para as conceber, transformar e representar. Assim, e após analisarmos algumas das várias possibilidades atualmente disponíveis, iniciou-se o processo de evolução de um método e desenvolvimento de uma abordagem que nos permitisse conceber ontologias. O método que evoluímos e adaptamos permitirá derivar terminologias de um domínio específico, agregando-as de forma a facilitar a construção de um catálogo de terminologias. Em seguida, a definição de uma abordagem para conceber ontologias permitirá a construção de uma ontologia de um domínio específico. Esta abordagem permite em primeira instância, integrar e armazenar os dados de diferentes sistemas de informação de uma determinada organização. Num segundo momento, são definidas as regras para o mapeamento e construção da base de dados ontológica. Finalmente, é também proposta uma arquitetura tecnológica que permitirá efetuar o mapeamento de uma ontologia através da construção de redes complexas, permitindo mapear e relacionar terminologias. Este trabalho de doutoramento engloba inúmeros projetos de Investigação & Desenvolvimento (I&D) pertencentes a diferentes domínios como por exemplo Indústria de Software, Indústria Têxtil, Indústria Robótica e Smart Cities. Finalmente, é realizada uma análise critica e descritiva do trabalho realizado, sendo que apontamos ainda perspetivas de possíveis trabalhos futuros

Do You Know What I Know?:Situational Awareness of Co-located Teams in Multidisplay Environments

Modern collaborative environments often provide an overwhelming amount of visual information on multiple displays. In complex project settings, the amount of visual information on multiple displays, and the multitude of personal and shared interaction devices in these environments can reduce the awareness of team members on ongoing activities, the understanding of shared visualisations, and the awareness of who is in control of shared artifacts. Research reported in this thesis addresses the situational awareness (SA) support of co-located teams working on team projects in multidisplay environments. Situational awareness becomes even more critical when the content of multiple displays changes rapidly, and when these provide large amounts of information. This work aims at getting insights into design and evaluation of shared display visualisations that afford situational awareness and group decision making. This thesis reports the results of three empirical user studies in three different domains: life science experimentation, decision making in brainstorming teams, and agile software development. The first and the second user studies evaluate the impact of the Highlighting-on-Demand and the Chain-of-Thoughts SA on the group decision-making and awareness. The third user study presents the design and evaluation of a shared awareness display for software teams. Providing supportive visualisations on a shared large display, we aimed at reducing the distraction from the primary task, enhancing the group decision-making process and the perceived task performance

Exploratory Browsing

In recent years the digital media has influenced many areas of our life. The transition from analogue to digital has substantially changed our ways of dealing with media collections. Today‟s interfaces for managing digital media mainly offer fixed linear models corresponding to the underlying technical concepts (folders, events, albums, etc.), or the metaphors borrowed from the analogue counterparts (e.g., stacks, film rolls). However, people‟s mental interpretations of their media collections often go beyond the scope of linear scan. Besides explicit search with specific goals, current interfaces can not sufficiently support the explorative and often non-linear behavior. This dissertation presents an exploration of interface design to enhance the browsing experience with media collections. The main outcome of this thesis is a new model of Exploratory Browsing to guide the design of interfaces to support the full range of browsing activities, especially the Exploratory Browsing. We define Exploratory Browsing as the behavior when the user is uncertain about her or his targets and needs to discover areas of interest (exploratory), in which she or he can explore in detail and possibly find some acceptable items (browsing). According to the browsing objectives, we group browsing activities into three categories: Search Browsing, General Purpose Browsing and Serendipitous Browsing. In the context of this thesis, Exploratory Browsing refers to the latter two browsing activities, which goes beyond explicit search with specific objectives. We systematically explore the design space of interfaces to support the Exploratory Browsing experience. Applying the methodology of User-Centered Design, we develop eight prototypes, covering two main usage contexts of browsing with personal collections and in online communities. The main studied media types are photographs and music. The main contribution of this thesis lies in deepening the understanding of how people‟s exploratory behavior has an impact on the interface design. This thesis contributes to the field of interface design for media collections in several aspects. With the goal to inform the interface design to support the Exploratory Browsing experience with media collections, we present a model of Exploratory Browsing, covering the full range of exploratory activities around media collections. We investigate this model in different usage contexts and develop eight prototypes. The substantial implications gathered during the development and evaluation of these prototypes inform the further refinement of our model: We uncover the underlying transitional relations between browsing activities and discover several stimulators to encourage a fluid and effective activity transition. Based on this model, we propose a catalogue of general interface characteristics, and employ this catalogue as criteria to analyze the effectiveness of our prototypes. We also present several general suggestions for designing interfaces for media collections

Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines [2006 edition]

The new edition of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines. These guidelines reflect HHS’ commitment to identifying innovative, research-based approaches that result in highly responsive and easy-to-use Web sites for the public. These guidelines help move us in that direction by providing practical, yet authoritative, guidance on a broad range of Web design and communication issues. Having access to the best available research helps to ensure we make the right decisions the first time around and reduces the possibility of errors and costly mistakes

Visual analysis of anatomy ontologies and related genomic information

Challenges in scientific research include the difficulty in obtaining overviews of the large amount of data required for analysis, and in resolving the differences in terminology used to store and interpret information in multiple, independently created data sets. Ontologies provide one solution for analysis involving multiple data sources, improving cross-referencing and data integration. This thesis looks at harnessing advanced human perception to reduce the cognitive load in the analysis of the multiple, complex data sets the bioinformatics user group studied use in research, taking advantage also of users’ domain knowledge, to build mental models of data that map to its underlying structure. Guided by a user-centred approach, prototypes were developed to provide a visual method for exploring users’ information requirements and to identify solutions for these requirements. 2D and 3D node-link graphs were built to visualise the hierarchically structured ontology data, to improve analysis of individual and comparison of multiple data sets, by providing overviews of the data, followed by techniques for detailed analysis of regions of interest. Iterative, heuristic and structured user evaluations were used to assess and refine the options developed for the presentation and analysis of the ontology data. The evaluation results confirmed the advantages that visualisation provides over text-based analysis, and also highlighted the advantages of each of 2D and 3D for visual data analysis.Overseas Research Students Awards SchemeJames Watt Scholarshi