An Ontology Network to support Knowledge Representation and Semantic Interoperability in the HCI Domain
Name: SIMONE DORNELAS COSTA
Type: PhD thesis
Publication date: 08/07/2022
Advisor:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| MONALESSA PERINI BARCELLOS | Advisor * |
Examining board:
| Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| FABIANO BORGES RUY | External Alternate * |
| JOÃO PAULO ANDRADE ALMEIDA | Internal Examiner * |
| MONALESSA PERINI BARCELLOS | Advisor * |
| VÍTOR ESTÊVÃO SILVA SOUZA | Internal Examiner * |
Summary: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a knowledge and a multidisciplinary area aimed at the practice of information
technology centered on humans. Currently, even more interactive systems are required to be personalized,
responsive, adaptive, user-friendly, and characterized by increasingly connected environments and intelligent
applications. Being such a diverse area, HCI involves a diverse body of knowledge and a complex set of concepts. This
leads to semantic interoperability problems, which affect users, designers, and interactive systems. Moreover, the
design and evaluation of interactive systems are knowledge-intensive activities. In this context, knowledge-related
problems, such as the ones related to knowledge representation and sharing, cause the risk of losing relevant
knowledge. Therefore, efficient mechanisms to promote common understanding and collective construction of
knowledge are necessary. Ontologies have been successfully used in several domains to capture and organize
knowledge seeking to deal with interoperability and knowledge-related problems. In this work, we argue that
organizing HCI ontologies in an ontology network provides a comprehensive conceptualization of the HCI domain;
favors knowledge growth, reuse, and integration; and potentializes the use of ontologies in knowledge-based and interoperability solutions. In this sense, this work proposes the Human-Computer Interaction Ontology Network (HCI-
ON). HCI-ON is grounded on a foundational ontology, is aligned with HCI standards and literature, and addresses HCI
relevant aspects. HCI-ON has a core ontology that addresses the human-computer interaction phenomenon and
domain-specific ontologies covering HCI subdomains such as HCI design, evaluation, and user interface, among others.
Aiming at knowledge growth in a consistent way, HCI-ON provides mechanisms to support its constant evolution
throughout the addition of new or existing ontologies. In the HCI domain is possible to use HCI-ON as a whole or
extracts of it to solve semantic interoperability and knowledge-related problems. To demonstrate the use of HCI-ON
to support solving such problems, we used an HCI-ON extract to develop UXON, a system that supports UX evaluation
based on logging data produced by an immersive application called Compomus. As a result, the use of HCI-ON was
considered feasible and useful.
