User Interface Design Considerations for Linked Data Authoring Environments
Stephen C. Davies, Jesse Hatfield, Chris Donaher, Jessica Zeitz Self · 2010
If non-technical end users are to contribute to the Web of Data as they have to the Web of Documents, they must employ tools that enable them to do so. This challenge is not easy to meet, as formal knowledge representation is a daunting task for the uninitiated. Indeed, we have empirically observed that expressing anything but the most straightforward of facts in RDF-compatible format is extremely difficult for newcomers to do reliably. This paper reports on a controlled experiment in which novices attempted to use a prototype Linked Data interface to both find and encode bits of everyday knowledge. The application presents a user-friendly veneer to the Semantic Web, manifesting the essential graph-based nature of the data model while shielding the user from the complexity of syntax. This allows us to study user behavior in attacking the deep, cognitive problem: breaking down knowledge into the triple-based structure required by RDF Linked Data. Our study sheds light on some of the key aspects of knowledge formulation that novices struggle with, and suggests several specific design approaches for Linked Data authoring environments that our experiment makes clear beneficially address crucial issues.