Prototyping-based Usability-oriented Knowledge Systems Engineering

Abstract

Despite increasing industrial as well as research-based interest, knowledge (-based) systems (KS) still challenge developers by their complexity. However, existing KS development methodologies in most cases lack an appropriate integration of UI design and usability evaluation activities, due to their focus on knowledge base development. Regarding UI and interaction design, KS consequently still often are built in a rather ad-hoc manner, lacking both reusability of proven solutions and potentially valuable experimentation with alternative UI and interaction designs. In this paper, we present the tailored KS development tool ProKEt, that enables efficient, agile KS development while specifically focusing on UI/interaction design, and that moreover seamlessly integrates usability evaluation functionality.