Defining an Embodiment Space for Intelligibility

Abstract

One fundamental barrier to the wide-scale adoption of intelligible systems is the lack of commonly available software designs that allow system designers to readily refer to and complete the finished product with intelligible capabilities. A number of intelligible systems and toolkits that provide different kinds of explanations have been proposed. It is still unclear how the additional information needed to provide these explanations into the engineering process of such an intelligible system. In this paper, we propose a framework Embodiment Space that uses Activity Theory as an instrument to help model the interaction for improving end-user understanding of intelligible systems. We then connect the Embodiment Space with software architectural patterns as a tool for supporting the implementation process. We present several examples, rooted in the Embodiment Space framework, in which explanations are provided for each of the difficult circumstances experienced by the end-user.