A Framework of Cognitive Design Elements for Ontology Navigation

Ontology-based knowledge representation systems are used in many domains to facilitate information retrieval and to support data interoperability. Understanding, maintaining, and evolving ontologies becomes increasingly difficult as the size and complexity of the ontology grows. Users report experiencing disorientation working in environments intended to help them find, examine, and navigate between places of interest within the ontology. We believe this disorientation can be reduced with a better understanding of cognitive support requirements for ontology navigation. To that end, we have analyzed the literature to understand navigation as a cognitive task and performed field studies to uncover the issues expert users encounter when navigating ontologies. From this backround, we present a framework of cognitive design elements to improve tools for ontology navigation.

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