Explaining conceptual models – An architecture and design principles

Abstract

An important activity in requirements engineering is validation, which is the process of checking whether a model correctly represents a piece of reality and the users’ requirements. One technique for supporting validation is explanation generation which combines paraphrasing of a specification with question-answer facilities that interactively support a user in exploring a model. In this paper, we propose an architecture and design principles for constructing explanation generation systems for conceptual models. The architecture is partly based on Toulmin’s argumentation model, which provides a framework for structuring arguments. We argue that this architecture assists in building explanation generation systems that are highly interactive, provide an adequate amount of information for different user categories, and support a wide range of validation techniques.