Lee Feigenbaum recently argued that “semantic web software must be easy to use.” He explains, “On the surface, this sounds a bit trite. Surely we should demand that all software be easy to use, right? While ease of use is clearly an important goal in software design in general, I’d argue that it’s absolutely crucial to successfully realizing the value from Semantic Web software.”

He continues, “Software that is hard to use has two main effects. First, it frustrates and annoys the user. Users won’t choose to use frustrating software for any more tasks than they absolutely have to. Second, hard to use software limits the audience who can benefit from it. This is particularly true for software that is hard to use because it is complicated.”

Feigenbaum adds, “If a software application lacks an intuitive user experience, demands that users be familiar with URIs, RDF, or OWL, or requires knowledge of (or learning) an analytics or data access language like MDX or SQL, then it is immediately limiting its use to IT professionals, a small fraction of a company’s employees. If a business manager wants to accomplish something with this hard-to-use software, they’ve no other option but to schedule time with IT, define their requirements, and wait for the results. And all of this takes significant calendar time; enough time, in fact, that it marginalizes the calendar time benefits promised by the flexibility of Semantic Web technologies.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy Flickr/ Civilian Scrabble

 

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