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Visualizations are commonly used as a cognitive aid for presenting large ontologies and instance data. One challenge with these visual techniques is that the generated views are often very dense and complex. It is difficult to know which concepts to include in the visualization to meet a user's information needs. In the DIaMOND (Degree of Interest Modelling for Ontology Navigation and Development) project we are investigating the application of principles of attention-reactive interfaces to provide adaptive visualizations of the underlying ontology.

As a first step toward investigating this approach, we are conducting studies of users' interaction patterns within Protégé and OBO-Edit. Throughout our work in this domain, we have been concerned with which tasks could benefit from visualization support and when visualization support should be provided. These studies will provide important insight into these issues as well as a basis for preliminary evaluation of the impact the adapted views have on users' navigation.

Participants:

• Tricia d'Entremont PhD Student, University of Victoria
• Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey, University of Victoria
• Chris Callendar, University of Victoria

The DIaMOND project uses the Mylyn plug-in for Eclipse developed by Mik Kersten of the Software Practices Lab at the University of British Columbia.

This work is supported by the National Center for Biomedical Ontology, under roadmap-initiative grant U54 HG004028 from the National Institutes of Health.