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arXiv · 2510.03078

From Facts to Foils: Designing and Evaluating Counterfactual Explanations for Smart Environments

Anna Trapp·Mersedeh Sadeghi·Andreas Vogelsang
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Abstract

Explainability is increasingly seen as an essential feature of rule-based smart environments. While counterfactual explanations, which describe what could have been done differently to achieve a desired outcome, are a powerful tool in eXplainable AI (XAI), no established methods exist for generating them in these rule-based domains. In this paper, we present the first formalization and implementation of counterfactual explanations tailored to this domain. It is implemented as a plugin that extends an existing explanation engine for smart environments. We conducted a user study (N=17) to evaluate our generated counterfactuals against traditional causal explanations. The results show that user preference is highly contextual: causal explanations are favored for their linguistic simplicity and in time-pressured situations, while counterfactuals are preferred for their actionable content, particularly when a user wants to resolve a problem. Our work contributes a practical framework for a new type of explanation in smart environments and provides empirical evidence to guide the choice of when each explanation type is most effective.

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Anna Trapp, Mersedeh Sadeghi, Andreas Vogelsang. 2025-10-03. From Facts to Foils: Designing and Evaluating Counterfactual Explanations for Smart Environments. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03078

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