Visual Ontology Alignment System - an Evaluation

Ontology alignment is the process of mapping related concepts from different ontologies. A lot of research effort has been invested in development of algorithmic methods supporting automatic discovery of mappings between ontological concepts. However, automatic alignment remains potentially prone to errors especially with large real-world ontologies, demanding intervention of domain experts. We therefore created a semi-automatic tool including algorithmic alignment methods and an interactive visual interface. Visualisation components included in the interface support experts in navigating the concept space and reviewing the automatically generated mapping suggestions. An experiment with 15 test users was performed to evaluate whether, and in which cases the use of visualisation is beneficial compared to a user interface employing standard GUI widgets. The results indicate that users typically executed tasks slightly faster with an interface using standard widgets, but an interface which includes a visualisation component providing overview, filter and narrowing-down functionality achieved higher rates of successful task completion.