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End-User-Centered Explainable AI Framework

A practical prototyping tool to design explainable AI for non-technical end-users.

End-User-Friendly Explanatory Forms
• Feature-based explanation
• Example-based explanation
• Rule-based explanation
• Contextual information
Explanation Goals

EUCA: End-User-Centered Explainable AI Framework

The EUCA framework is a prototyping tool to design explainable artificial intelligence for non-technical end-users.

It can help you build a low-fidelity explainable AI (XAI) prototype, so that you can use it to quickly “trial and error” (without the effort to implement it), and co-design and iterate it together with your end-users.

You can use the prototype at the initial phase for user need assessment, and as a start for your explainable AI system iteration.

Why explainable AI?

When and why explainable AI for end-users

As AI is getting pervasive and assists users in making decisions on critical tasks, such as autonomous driving vehicles, clinical diagnosis, financial decisions, legal and military judgment, or something crucial that relates to people’s life or money, the end-users will be more likely to require AI to justify its prediction.

Making AI explainable to its end-users is challenging, since end-users are laypersons or domain experts, and they do not have technical knowledge in AI or computer science to understand how AI works.

Who use EUCA?

EUCA can be used by anyone who designs or builds an explainable AI system for end-users, such as UI/UX designers, AI developers, AI researchers, and HCI researchers.


What is the EUCA framework?

The five main components of EUCA framework

The main component of EUCA is the 12 end-user-friendly explanation forms, and

In addition, EUCA also provides a suggested prototyping method, and end-users’ diverse explanation goal analysis (such as to calibrate trust, detect bias, resolve disagreement with AI).

The 12 explanation forms in EUCA framework are:

Feature-based explanation

  1. Feature Attribute
  2. Feature Shape
  3. Feature Interaction

Example-based explanation

  1. Similar Example
  2. Typical Example
  3. Counterfactual Example

Rule-based explanation

  1. Rule
  2. Decision Tree

Contextual information

  1. Input
  2. Output
  3. Performance
  4. Dataset

end-user-friendly explanation forms include explaining using feature, example and rule

Comparison table: You may jump to corresponding sections by clicking on the blue text

Explanation form User-Friendly Level (3:most friendly) Local/global Datatype Visual representations Pros Cons UI/UX Design Implications Applicable explanation goals XAI algorithms
Feature Attribute ★ ★ ★ Local/Global Tabular/Img/Txt Saliency map; Bar chart Simple and easy to understand; Can answer how and why AI reaches its decisions. Illusion of causality, confirmation bias Alarm users about causality illusion; Allow setting threshold on importance score, show details on-demand To verify AI’s decision LIME , SHAP, CAM, LRP, TCAV
Feature Shape ★ ★ Global Tabular Line plot Graphical representation, easy to understand the relationship between one feature and prediction Lacks feature interaction; Information overload if multiple feature shapes are presented Users can inspect the plot of their interested features; May indicate the position of local data points (usually users’ input data) To control and improve the outcome; To reveal bias PDP, ALE, GAM
Feature Interaction Global Tabular 2D or 3D heatmap Show feature-feature interaction The diagram on multiple features is difficult to interpret Users may select their interested feature pairs and check feature interactions; or XAI system can prioritize significant feature interactions To control and improve the outcome PDP, ALE, GA2M
Similar Example ★ ★ ★ Local Tabular/Img/Txt Data instances as examples Easy to comprehend, users intuitively verify AI’s decision using analogical reasoning on similar examples It does not highlight features within examples to enable users’ side-by-side comparison Support side-by-side feature-based comparison among examples To verify the decision Nearest neighbour, CBR
Typical Example ★ ★ Local/Global Tabular/Img/Txt Data instances as examples Use prototypical instances to show learned representation; Reveal potential problems of the model Users may not appreciate the idea of typical cases May show within-class variations, or edge cases To verify the decision; To reveal bias k-Mediods, MMD-critic , Generate prototype(Simonyan, Mahendran2014), CNN prototype(Li2017, Chen2019), Influential instance
Counterfactual Example ★ ★ Local Tabular/Img/Txt Two counterfactual data instances with their highlighted contrastive features, or a progressive transition between the two Helpful to identify the differences between the current outcome and another contrastive outcome Hard to understand, may cause confusion User can define the predicted outcome to be contrasted with, receive personalized counterfactual constraints; May only show controllable features To differentiate between similar instances; To control and improve the outcome Inverse classification, MMD-critic, Progression, Counterfactual Visual Explanations, Pertinent Negative
Decision Rules/Sets ★ ★ Global Tabular/Img/Txt Present rules as text, table, or matrix Present decision logic, “like human explanation” Need to carefully balance between completeness and simplicity of explanation Trim rules and show on-demand; Highlight local clauses related to user’s interested instances Facilitate users’ learning, report generation, and communication with other stakeholders Bayesian Rule Lists, LORE, Anchors
Decision tree Global Tabular/Img/Txt Tree diagram Show decision process, explain the differences Too much information, complicated to understand Trim the tree and show on-demand; Support highlighting branches for user’s interested instances Comparison; Counterfactual reasoning Model distillation , Disentangle CNN

How to use EUCA for XAI prototyping?

The five main components of EUCA framework

Step 1: Create prototyping cards from explanation forms

  1. Think about your input and feature data type

  2. Get familiar with the end-user-friendly explanation forms

  3. Manually extracting several interpretable features

  4. Fill in the prototyping card template with the extracted features

  5. (optional) Prepare multiple cards varying UI/UX

  6. (optional) Consider applying the general human-AI interaction guidelines in your design

Step 2: Co-design and iterate low-fidelity prototype with end-users

  1. Understanding end-users’ needs for explainability

  2. Talk with end-users to co-design prototypes

Step 3: Based on the provided XAI techniques, implement a functional prototype


Prototyping materials for download

We provide the following prototyping materials:

  1. Templates: Blank cards card grids with their explanation form names
  2. Examples: We demonstrate creating prototype for tabular or sequential input, and for image input respectively.
    • House: House price prediction. Tabular input data
    • Health : Diabetes risk prediction. Sequential or tabular input
    • Car: Self-driving car. Image or video input
    • Bird: Bird species recognition. Image input

We have the following versions:

You can create your own or even draw your explanatory cards on paper. We provide some examples on tabular and image input data for your reference.


How to cite the EUCA framework?

EUCA is created by Weina Jin, Jianyu Fan, Diane Gromala, Philippe Pasquier, and Ghassan Hamarneh.

Here is our research paper: Arxiv

EUCA: the End-User-Centered Explainable AI Framework

@article{jin2021euca,
   title={EUCA: the End-User-Centered Explainable AI Framework},
      author={Weina Jin and Jianyu Fan and Diane Gromala and Philippe Pasquier and Ghassan Hamarneh},
      year={2021},
      eprint={2102.02437},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.HC}
}

Supplementary Material S1 - Literature Review on Explanation Forms

Supplementary Material S2 - User Study Details and Quantitative Analysis Report

To reach us for any comments or feedback, you can Email Weina: weinaj at sfu dot ca.


Contributions from the Community are highly encouraged!

You can inspire other designers by sharing your sketches, designs and prototypes using EUCA. We will post your design on the EUCA page.

To share your design and input, report a typo, error, or outdated information, please feel free to contact weinaj at sfu dot ca, or open a pull request on the EUCA project repo.