Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Requirements engineering |
| Early online date | 25 Mar 2025 |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 25 Mar 2025 |
Abstract
Modern software systems are becoming increasingly complex to operate and to understand. In some cases, where usability and transparency cannot address these problems on their own, providing explanations to the user can be an efficient solution. As a result, explainability has gained much traction as a non-functional requirement of software systems. Understanding what system requires which explanations is necessary to facilitate requirements engineering for explainable systems. To understand how different kinds of explanations relate to different kinds of software, an explainability taxonomy that applies to a variety of different software types is needed. In this paper, we report on the development and evaluation of a taxonomy for explainability needs. In an online survey, we asked 84 participants to state their questions and confusions concerning their most recently used software systems. We identified 315 explainability needs from the survey answers, from which we derived the taxonomy. We then evaluated the taxonomy in two focus groups with six stakeholders each. Drawing from the insights that we gained through this research, we present the three major contributions of this work: 1) an operational taxonomy for explainability needs in everyday software systems, 2) an overview of how the need for explanations differs between different types of software systems, and 3) a detailed evaluation of the taxonomy applied within a practical scenario.
Keywords
- Empirical research, Explainability, Focus group, Requirements engineering, Requirements taxonomy, Software quality, User experience
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Science(all)
- Software
- Computer Science(all)
- Information Systems
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In: Requirements engineering, 25.03.2025.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Framing what can be explained - an operational taxonomy for explainability needs
AU - Droste, Jakob
AU - Deters, Hannah
AU - Obaidi, Martin
AU - Klünder, Jil
AU - Schneider, Kurt
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025.
PY - 2025/3/25
Y1 - 2025/3/25
N2 - Modern software systems are becoming increasingly complex to operate and to understand. In some cases, where usability and transparency cannot address these problems on their own, providing explanations to the user can be an efficient solution. As a result, explainability has gained much traction as a non-functional requirement of software systems. Understanding what system requires which explanations is necessary to facilitate requirements engineering for explainable systems. To understand how different kinds of explanations relate to different kinds of software, an explainability taxonomy that applies to a variety of different software types is needed. In this paper, we report on the development and evaluation of a taxonomy for explainability needs. In an online survey, we asked 84 participants to state their questions and confusions concerning their most recently used software systems. We identified 315 explainability needs from the survey answers, from which we derived the taxonomy. We then evaluated the taxonomy in two focus groups with six stakeholders each. Drawing from the insights that we gained through this research, we present the three major contributions of this work: 1) an operational taxonomy for explainability needs in everyday software systems, 2) an overview of how the need for explanations differs between different types of software systems, and 3) a detailed evaluation of the taxonomy applied within a practical scenario.
AB - Modern software systems are becoming increasingly complex to operate and to understand. In some cases, where usability and transparency cannot address these problems on their own, providing explanations to the user can be an efficient solution. As a result, explainability has gained much traction as a non-functional requirement of software systems. Understanding what system requires which explanations is necessary to facilitate requirements engineering for explainable systems. To understand how different kinds of explanations relate to different kinds of software, an explainability taxonomy that applies to a variety of different software types is needed. In this paper, we report on the development and evaluation of a taxonomy for explainability needs. In an online survey, we asked 84 participants to state their questions and confusions concerning their most recently used software systems. We identified 315 explainability needs from the survey answers, from which we derived the taxonomy. We then evaluated the taxonomy in two focus groups with six stakeholders each. Drawing from the insights that we gained through this research, we present the three major contributions of this work: 1) an operational taxonomy for explainability needs in everyday software systems, 2) an overview of how the need for explanations differs between different types of software systems, and 3) a detailed evaluation of the taxonomy applied within a practical scenario.
KW - Empirical research
KW - Explainability
KW - Focus group
KW - Requirements engineering
KW - Requirements taxonomy
KW - Software quality
KW - User experience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105000908710&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00766-025-00440-x
DO - 10.1007/s00766-025-00440-x
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105000908710
JO - Requirements engineering
JF - Requirements engineering
SN - 0947-3602
ER -