The growing complexity of software systems and the influence of software-supported decisions in our society awoke the need for software that is transparent, accountable, and trust-worthy. 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. However, in order to incorporate this NFR into systems, we need to understand what explainability means from a software engineering perspective and how it impacts other quality aspects in a system. This allows for an early analysis of the benefits and possible design issues that arise from interrelationships between different quality aspects. Nevertheless, explainability is currently under-researched in the domain of requirements engineering and there is a lack of conceptual models and knowledge catalogues that support the requirements engineering process and system design. In this work, we bridge this gap by proposing a definition, a model, and a catalogue for explainability. They illustrate how explainability interacts with other quality aspects and how it may impact various quality dimensions of a system. To this end, we conducted an interdisciplinary Systematic Literature Review and validated our findings with experts in workshops.

Exploring Explainability: A Definition, a Model, and a Knowledge Catalogue

The advance of Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) and Internet of Things (IoT) brought a new set of Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs), especially related to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Invisibility is one of these NFRs, and it refers to either the merging of technology in the user environment or the decrease of the interaction workload. This new NFR may impact traditional NFRs (e.g., Usability), revealing positive correlations, when one NFR helps another, and negative correlations, when a procedure favors an NFR but creates difficulty for another one. Software engineers need to know about these correlations, so they can select appropriate strategies to satisfy Invisibility and traditional NFRs. Correlations between NFRs are usually stored in catalogs, which is a well-defined body of knowledge gathered from previous experience. Although Invisibility has been recently cataloged with development strategies, the literature still lacks catalogs with correlations for this NFR. Therefore, this work aims at capturing and cataloging invisibility correlations for UbiComp and IoT systems. To do that, we also propose to systematize the definition of correlations using the following well-defined research methods: Interview, Content Analysis and Questionnaire. As a result, we defined a catalog with 110 positive and negative correlations with 9 NFRs. This well-defined body of knowledge is useful for supporting software engineers to select strategies to satisfy Invisibility and other NFRs related to user interaction.

How developers believe Invisibility impacts NFRs related to User Interaction

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. 

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Explainable software systems: from requirements analysis to system evaluation

In the field of the Internet of things, the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) electronic tags has been increasingly widely used, but also face the shortcomings including diversity of data interface, the complexity of access and so on. In this paper, the authors introduce a design of architecture for general application program interface (API), which shields the diversity and complexity of RFID equipment. Also it realizes the integrated link management between applications and RFID read-write devices, which can greatly improve the management efficiency of information collection, analysis, processing and automatic operation. According to actual test, it realizes the design of seamless integration middleware, and can greatly promote the industry application of RFID. KEYWORD: Internet of Things; Radio Frequency Identification; Middleware; Architecture design

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The Design of RFID Middleware Architecture for Application in the Advanced Manufacturing Industry and the Internet of Things

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Fault Tolerant System Design

Non-functional requirements (NFR) are related to the user satisfaction about the quality attributes of the information system. In some cases these requirements are ignored or implemented by the end of the project in a chaotic way. It happens because, in many cases, the user does not have enough contact with the information system to solve these requirements, such as nonfunctional requirements for Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) middleware. This study presents the preparation of non-functional requirements catalogues for RFID middleware supported by Non-Functional Requirements Framework (NFR-Framework). Two case studies were performed to evaluate the Requirements Engineering process in the creation of the NFR catalogues and the effectiveness of the reuse of the catalogues. As a result, a set of non-functional requirements are presented and organized into catalogues that work as the foundation for RFID system developers in the identification and validation of non-functional requirements for RFID middleware in information systems context.

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Renato Cristiano Torres

Papers

NFR catalogues for RFID middleware