Modular graphical ontology engineering evaluated

Ontology engineering is traditionally a complex and time-consuming process, requiring an intimate knowledge of description logic and predicting non-local effects of different ontological commitments. Pattern-based modular ontology engineering, coupled with a graphical modeling paradigm, can help make ontology engineering accessible to modellers with limited ontology expertise. We have developed CoModIDE, the Comprehensive Modular Ontology IDE, to develop and explore such a modeling approach. In this paper we present an evaluation of the CoModIDE tool, with a set of 21 subjects carrying out some typical modeling tasks. Our findings indicate that using CoModIDE improves task completion rate and reduces task completion time, compared to using standard Protégé. Further, our subjects report higher System Usability Scale (SUS) evaluation scores for CoModIDE, than for Protégé. The subjects also report certain room for improvements in the CoModIDE tool – notably, these comments all concern comparatively shallow UI bugs or issues, rather than limitations inherent in the proposed modeling method itself. We deduce that our modeling approach is viable, and propose some consequences for ontology engineering tool development.