Building taxonomies and ontologies the object-oriented way

How can we organize knowledge most logically and productively? Taxonomies and ontologies offer solutions.

Text by Ekaterina Mitova Dimiter Simov

Inhaltsübersicht

Image: © Bet_Noire/shutterstock.com

All our tools (websites, applications, shops, educational programs, and so on) are means to organize knowledge and represent it in ways that enable humans to use it. In a sense, the success of our tools depends on how well they organize knowledge. We want our tools to serve our users well; therefore, we need good knowledge organization systems. Object-oriented user experience (OOUX) – the object-oriented approach to modeling and organizing knowledge – is a technique for analyzing the specifics of a domain by deconstructing it into its constituent objects, attributes, relationships, and actions. The resulting model is an excellent feed for your taxonomy, ontology, or other types of knowledge organization systems.

We see the world in objects

Let’s start with a little experiment. Think of a word. Any word.

Let us guess. Your word is a noun. Right?

We have done this little experiment ...