Design Patterns
Pattern library
24 canonical explainability design patterns organized around the human questions they answer.
24 patterns shown
Act
Actionable Recourse
What can I do to change this outcome?
Turns the factors behind an adverse decision into specific, realistic steps a person can actually take.
Govern
Agent Action Transparency
What actions is the AI agent taking?
Makes an autonomous agent’s actions visible before, during, and after it runs, so oversight stays possible.
Govern
AI Presence Disclosure
Am I interacting with an AI?
Makes AI involvement visible at the moment it matters, including labelling synthetic voices in calls.
Govern
AI-Generated Content Marking
If this leaves the system, will it still say AI made it?
Marks AI-generated files and text so their origin travels with them, long after they leave the interface.
Understand
Attribution
Why did the system make this decision?
Shows the top factors behind a decision in plain language, and whether each one helped or hurt the outcome.
Govern
Audit Trail & Logging
What is the complete record of this decision?
Keeps a tamper-evident record of inputs, model versions, and human interventions that others can actually read.
Judge
Confidence & Uncertainty
How certain is the system?
Signals how sure the system really is about an output, in a form non-technical users can read at a glance.
Govern
Consent & Data Use Transparency
What data is being used and how?
Makes personal data use understandable at the point of decision, so consent is informed rather than just collected.
Act
Contestability & Appeal
How can I challenge this decision?
Gives people a working route to challenge a decision and get a human review with a documented response.
Understand
Counterfactual Explanation
What would have changed the outcome?
Shows the smallest realistic change that would have produced a different result, making the decision boundary visible.
Understand
Data Provenance & Lineage
Where does this data come from?
Shows where the data behind a decision came from, how current it is, and whether it fits the case at hand.
Govern
Decision Timeline
What happened and when?
Lays out a decision as a chronology of steps and actors, from data collection through review to outcome.
Govern
Ethical & Fairness Signals
Is this system fair across groups?
Shows how the system performs across different populations, making bias visible and open to challenge.
Understand
Example-Based Explanation
What similar cases influenced this result?
Explains a result by comparing it to cases the user can recognise, building intuition through analogy rather than abstraction.
Understand
Explanation Layering
How much detail do I need?
Structures an explanation in depth layers, so a quick answer comes first and the full basis stays one step away.
Act
Feedback Loops
How can I correct the system?
Gives users a low-friction way to report errors and disagree, and tells them what happened to their input.
Judge
Grounding & Hallucination Indicators
Can I trust what the system generated?
Distinguishes generated claims that rest on retrievable evidence from those the model may have invented.
Act
Human-in-the-Loop
Who can review or override this decision?
Lets authorised people review, change, or override an AI decision, with every intervention on the record.
Understand
Inspection Dialogue
Can I ask the system follow-up questions?
Lets users interrogate a result directly, probing single factors and testing what-ifs in their own words.
Judge
Model Scope & Limits
What can this system reliably do?
States what the system was built and validated for, and flags clearly when a case falls outside that.
Govern
Model Transparency Cards
How was this system built and tested?
Documents a system’s purpose, data, performance, and limits in a form non-engineers can actually use.
Understand
Retrieved Source Attribution
What sources did the system draw from?
Exposes the documents a response was actually built from, so users can verify claims against the originals.
Understand
Role-Based Explanations
Is this explanation appropriate for me?
Adapts the depth, language, and available actions of an explanation to who is reading it and what they may do.
Judge
Temporal Stability & Distribution Shift
Is the system still reliable over time?
Signals when a model’s reliability may have drifted since deployment, so trust tracks current performance.