Knowledge-Level Analysis of the User Interface Design for a Compositional Modeling System

This paper presents the design of a knowledge acquisition user interface for a compositional modeling system. To facilitate collabora-tive development of knowledge bases and their reuse, knowledge of the domain is represented in a formal language based on the rst-order predicate logic. The vocabulary used is also formally deened explicitly in the same language. However, use of a formal representation language does not make the process of expressing knowledge about the domain easy or eecient for all users. We have designed the knowledge acquisition interface with multiple layers, each intended for a diierent type of users, such as programmers, knowledge engineers, and domain experts. Though the underlying modeling system employs one representation formalism, the layered interface allows each type of users to interact with the system in terms that are appropriate and eecient for their purposes.