Drawing OWL 2 ontologies with Eddy the editor

In this paper we introduce Eddy, a new open-source tool for the graphical editing of OWL~2 ontologies. Eddy is specifically designed for creating ontologies in Graphol, a completely visual ontology language that is equivalent to OWL~2. Thus, in Eddy ontologies are easily drawn as diagrams, rather than written as sets of formulas, as commonly happens in popular ontology design and engineering environments. This makes Eddy particularly suited for usage by people who are more familiar with diagramatic languages for conceptual modeling rather than with typical ontology formalisms, as is often required in non-academic and industrial contexts. Eddy provides intuitive functionalities for specifying Graphol diagrams, guarantees their syntactic correctness, and allows for exporting them in standard OWL 2 syntax. A user evaluation study we conducted shows that Eddy is perceived as an easy and intuitive tool for ontology specification

Specification and implementation of mapping rule visualization and editing : MapVOWL and the RMLEditor

Visual tools are implemented to help users in defining how to generate Linked Data from raw data. This is possible thanks to mapping languages which enable detaching mapping rules from the implementation that executes them. However, no thorough research has been conducted so far on how to visualize such mapping rules, especially if they become large and require considering multiple heterogeneous raw data sources and transformed data values. In the past, we proposed the RMLEditor, a visual graph-based user interface, which allows users to easily create mapping rules for generating Linked Data from raw data. In this paper, we build on top of our existing work: we (i) specify a visual notation for graph visualizations used to represent mapping rules, (ii) introduce an approach for manipulating rules when large visualizations emerge, and (iii) propose an approach to uniformly visualize data fraction of raw data sources combined with an interactive interface for uniform data fraction transformations. We perform two additional comparative user studies. The first one compares the use of the visual notation to present mapping rules to the use of a mapping language directly, which reveals that the visual notation is preferred. The second one compares the use of the graph-based RMLEditor for creating mapping rules to the form-based RMLx Visual Editor, which reveals that graph-based visualizations are preferred to create mapping rules through the use of our proposed visual notation and uniform representation of heterogeneous data sources and data values. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

NITELIGHT: A Graphical Tool for Semantic Query Construction

Query formulation is a key aspect of information retrieval, contributing to both the efficiency and usability of many semantic applications. A number of query languages, such as SPARQL, have been developed for the Semantic Web; however, there are, as yet, few tools to support end users with respect to the creation and editing of semantic queries. In this paper we introduce a graphical tool for semantic query construction (NITELIGHT) that is based on the SPARQL query language specification. The tool supports end users by providing a set of graphical notations that represent semantic query language constructs. This language provides a visual query language counterpart to SPARQL that we call vSPARQL. NITELIGHT also provides an interactive graphical editing environment that combines ontology navigation capabilities with graphical query visualization techniques. This paper describes the functionality and user interaction features of the NITELIGHT tool based on our work to date. We also present details of the vSPARQL constructs used to support the graphical representation of SPARQL queries

Intuitive querying of e-Health data repositories

At the centre of the Clinical e-Science Framework (CLEF) project is a repository of well organised, detailed clinical histories, encoded as data that will be available for use in clinical care and in-silico medical experiments. An integral part of the CLEF workbench is a tool to allow biomedical researchers and clinicians to query – in an intuitive way – the repository of patient data. This paper describes the CLEF query editing interface, which makes use of natural language generation techniques in order to alleviate some of the problems generally faced by natural language and graphical query interfaces. The query interface also incorporates an answer renderer that dynamically generates responses in both natural language text and graphics

Miki: a wiki for synchronous modeling of software requirements

Eliciting a high quality requirements model that can be traced down to implementations is a challenge. Keeping models updated for evolving software systems is a further challenge. Formal modelling methods are one approach - but one that is too rigid and costly for many small software engineering companies [1]. We propose a light-weight alternative, using a wiki as the synchronous bridge between requirements capture and more formal modeling features of the IDE such as Eclipse

Automated software development workstation

Engineering software development was automated using an expert system (rule-based) approach. The use of this technology offers benefits not available from current software development and maintenance methodologies. A workstation was built with a library or program data base with methods for browsing the designs stored; a system for graphical specification of designs including a capability for hierarchical refinement and definition in a graphical design system; and an automated code generation capability in FORTRAN. The workstation was then used in a demonstration with examples from an attitude control subsystem design for the space station. Documentation and recommendations are presented

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

Declarative Specification

Deriving formal specifications from informal requirements is extremely difficult since one has to overcome the conceptual gap between an application domain and the domain of formal specification methods. To reduce this gap we introduce application-specific specification languages, i.e., graphical and textual notations that can be unambiguously mapped to formal specifications in a logic language. We describe a number of realised approaches based on this idea, and evaluate them with respect to their domain specificity vs. generalit

Freeform User Interfaces for Graphical Computing

報告番号: 甲15222 ; 学位授与年月日: 2000-03-29 ; 学位の種別: 課程博士 ; 学位の種類: 博士(工学) ; 学位記番号: 博工第4717号 ; 研究科・専攻: 工学系研究科情報工学専

Systematic evaluation of design choices for software development tools

[Abstract]: Most design and evaluation of software tools is based on the intuition and experience of the designers. Software tool designers consider themselves typical users of the tools that they build and tend to subjectively evaluate their products rather than objectively evaluate them using established usability methods. This subjective approach is inadequate if the quality of software tools is to improve and the use of more systematic methods is advocated. This paper summarises a sequence of studies that show how user interface design choices for software development tools can be evaluated using established usability engineering techniques. The techniques used included guideline review, predictive modelling and experimental studies with users