A core ontology on the Human–Computer Interaction phenomenon

Abstract

Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) is a complex communication phenomenon involving human beings and computer systems that gained large attention from industry and academia with the advent of new types of interactive systems (mobile applications, smart cities, smart homes, ubiquitous systems and so on). Despite of its importance, there is still a lack of formal and explicit representations of what the HCI phenomenon is. In this paper, we intend to clarify the main notions involved in the HCI phenomenon, by establishing an explicit conceptualization of it. To do so, we need to understand what interactive computer systems are, which types of actions users perform when interacting with an interactive computer system, and finally what human–computer interaction itself is. The conceptualization is presented as a core reference ontology, called HCIO (HCI Ontology), which is grounded in the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). HCIO was evaluated using ontology verification and validation techniques and has been used as core ontology of an HCI ontology network.