Ontology Usability Scale: Context-aware Metrics for the Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction of Ontology Uses

Xiaogang Ma,Peter Fox,Patrick West,Linyun Fu

doi:10.5334/dsj-2018-010

Xiaogang Ma, Peter Fox + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2018-010

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Abstract

<p class="p1">Both ontology builders and users need a way to evaluate ontologies in terms of usability, but existing ontology evaluation approaches do not fit this purpose. We propose the Ontology Usability Scale (OUS), a ten-item Likert scale derived from statements prepared according to a semiotic framework and an online poll in the Semantic Web community to provide a practical way of ontology usability evaluation. Case studies were conducted to bookkeep current usability evaluation results for ontologies expecting revisions in the future, and discussions of the poll results are presented to help proper use and customization of the OUS.

Highlights

Along with the rapid development of the Linked Open Data, ontologies have been increasingly built and used in various fields (Bikakis et al, 2013)
Similar with ONTOMETRIC, our approach requires a scorer to get a single numerical score for each ontology in question, but we aimed to provide the scorer a Likert scale consisting of around 10 items, instead of a huge scoring form with pending weights for each item
According to Morris, semantics is the study of the relation of signs to the things they refer to; syntactics is the study of the relation of signs to one another; pragmatics studies the relation of signs to their interpreters

Summary

Introduction

Along with the rapid development of the Linked Open Data, ontologies have been increasingly built and used in various fields (Bikakis et al, 2013). We adopt the definition given in the international standard ISO 9241-11 (ISO, 1998), which has received endorsements from various domains: “[Usability is] the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.”. The background of this definition is Human-Computer Interaction and the definition represents a user-centered point of view (Jokela et al, 2003). With satisfaction as one of its attributes, defined as “freedom from discomfort, and positive attitude to the use of the product” (Jokela et al, 2003), usability is inevitably subjective

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