Explainable software systems: from requirements analysis to system evaluation

Abstract

The growing complexity of software systems and the influence of software-supported decisions in our society sparked the need for software that is transparent, accountable, and trustworthy. Explainability has been identified as a means to achieve these qualities. It is recognized as an emerging non-functional requirement (NFR) that has a significant impact on system quality. Accordingly, software engineers need means to assist them in incorporating this NFR into systems. This requires an early analysis of the benefits and possible design issues that arise from interrelationships between different quality aspects. However, explainability is currently under-researched in the domain of requirements engineering, and there is a lack of artifacts that support the requirements engineering process and system design. In this work, we remedy this deficit by proposing four artifacts: a definition of explainability, a conceptual model, a knowledge catalogue, and a reference model for explainable systems. These artifacts should support software and requirements engineers in understanding the definition of explainability and how it interacts with other quality aspects. Besides that, they may be considered a starting point to provide practical value in the refinement of explainability from high-level requirements to concrete design choices, as well as on the identification of methods and metrics for the evaluation of the implemented requirements.