Post-hoc and real-time explanations have different timing requirements
Aliases: real-time explanation · post-hoc explanation · explanation timing
What it is
Temporal fit of explanations means an explanation arrives while it can change human action. Real-time explanations support yielding, confirmation, or stopping and must be brief and pre-commitment. Post-hoc explanations support investigation, learning, and appeal with richer evidence and timelines.
Why it happens
Under a short decision window, personnel need what happened, current risk, and available action rather than a full chain. Afterward, diagnosis needs detail. A report in the live interface delays response; a live sentence used as audit record loses evidence.
Studying it
Arrival time and granularity can be compared on correct intervention, response time, workload, reconstruction, and appeal. Conditions where a correct explanation arrives after the action window expose temporal failure. Severity and role change the required window.
Where it stops holding
Fast protective control acts before explanation. Ongoing work may need layered live and review views. Simplification must not hide uncertainty, while retrospective detail must not invent evidence unavailable at the time.
Applying it
- Mark the last safe intervention time for each decision and show only state, cause class, and action before it.
- Preserve a full trace for later timeline and alternatives.
- Drill deadline-bound response and then have independent reviewers reconstruct the same event.
Related
- Same group: X3.07.1 Critical decisions must be traceable to their inputs and rules · X3.07.3 Overly technical explanations are equivalent to no explanation for field personnel · X3.07.4 Unexplainable decisions should trigger a conservative default in high-risk settings
- Adjacent: X4.02 Human intervention · X4.05 Takeover and handoff
- Search terms:
real-time explanation·post-hoc explanation·time-critical decision support