Visual modeling and the Web

Conceptual browsing with

Conzilla

Mikael Nilsson

Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm

mini@nada.kth.se

Conzilla

An ontology-based browser

Contents

• Presentation of the institution.• Conceptual browsing.• Conzilla.• Conclusions.

How can ontology enhance the Web experience?

CID• Center for user-oriented

Information technology Design

• Academia industry and user organizations.

• Computer science, art, design, and more.

http://cid.nada.kth.se

Interactive Learning Environments

How do we create/present modular, portable learning material?

Conceptual topologies

Static topologies

• Content not reusable.• Well-defined context.• Example: textbook.

Dynamic topologies

• Content reusable.• Contextual anarchy.• Example: hypertext

“In what context am I viewing this?”

How do we create reusable content without losing contextual clarity when

browsing it?

Conceptual browsing

• Context content separated.

• Surf the context instead of the content.

• Concept-maps are (ontological) context.

• Concepts linked to content.

Conzilla

• Typed concepts/relations in XML—CORBA —...

• Can express ontological systems such as OIL (probably).

• Distributed design à la Web.• Path URNs as identifiers. (urn:path:/se/sih/…)

• IMS/IEEE Learning Object Metadata (LOM).• Usability and design.

Conzilla in action

Web-

browser

Future: embedding and interaction

ContentLinks to other maps

Meta-data

Applications

• Conceptual Explorer– Mathemagics project at CID.

• Visual browser for– RDF(S)-based systems (OIL, etc.).– Notion, Topic Maps etc.– Meta Object Facility (UML models).

• Mobile ontology explorer.• Etc...

Conclusions

• The Web badly needs semantics.• Object modeling à la RDF(S) is a well-proven

technique for conceptual organization.• The advantages of both are combined in a

conceptual browser.• We are looking for cooperation possibilities.

Interested?

http://cid.nada.kth.se/il/conzilla