Integrating Activity Theory and Semiotics as Knowledge Elicitation Technique

This paper combines the Activity Theory approach with the Semiotics approach as a knowledge elicitation technique. As being understood increasingly, not only is it difficult and time-consuming to build KBSs, the introduction of a knowledge engineer between the domain expert and the knowledge base could lead to errors and misunderstandings. We view knowledge base systems development as a collaborative activity. The picture is further complicated by the difficulties involved in eliciting knowledge. We survey these factors and seek to integrate the concept of activity theory and semiotics in this research. Activity theory offers a useful perspective for analysing and understanding collaborative work in general, independently of any specific field of application. The semiotics used to define the concepts, its representation, and interpretation. In this article we argue and further demonstrate that the combination of activity theory and semiotics can bring important benefits to the knowledge elicitation process. The Delphi technique is used to illustrate the top 10 ranked benefits of using our proposed technique of integrating activity theory and semiotics as knowledge elicitation technique.