Ontological consideration on Human Interface

Today´s our life is surrounded by and connected to lots of tools, devices, utensils and computer program applications. Our finger, eye and brain are connected to these things via human interface. From now on, we will use HI as an abbreviated form of human interface. Well-designed HI is the very key factor of practical usability and easy operation of various devices or applications. In this paper we claim that HI can be viewed through an ontology of machine operation. This ontology is a kind of structured knowledge and gist of corresponding machine or device. The property and quality of HI is straightly reflected in ontology. When discussing HI, of course the physical aspects of interface, such as forms and shapes of handle, button, lever, pedal, dial, knob, switch, and so on are important; however we claim that these physical matters are also investigated through and/or as device ontology. We will show some typical example of device ontology laying the foundations of well-designed HI.