Cognitive support for ontology modeling

Knowledge engineering tools are becoming ever more complex, and therefore increased cognitive support will be necessary to leverage the potential of those tools. Our paper motivates this claim by examining some previous work in this domain and explaining the nature of cognitive support. We discuss some of the problem areas we have encountered in our research. Through user questionnaires and observations carried out at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the University of Washington Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) Project, we have begun to gain an understanding of the cognitive barriers experienced by the users of knowledge engineering tools. We present some proposed solutions that could address the problems we identified, and in addition, discuss how our own tool, called Jambalaya, could be applied to provide cognitive support. We analyse the support Jambalaya provides using some non-functional design criteria and illustrate some trade-offs inherent in tool design. We suggest that the need for cognitive support in knowledge engineering is immediate and essential.