Enhancing Text Corpus Exploration with Post Hoc Explanations and Comparative Design

Abstract: Text corpus exploration (TCE) spans the range of exploratory search tasks: it goes beyond simple retrieval to include item discovery and learning about the corpus and topic. Systems support TCE with tools such as similarity-based recommendations and embedding-based spatial maps. However, these tools address specific tasks; current systems lack the flexibility to support the range of tasks encountered in practice and the iterative, multiscale, workflows users employ. In this paper, we provide methods that enhance TCE tools with post hoc explanations and multiscale, comparative designs to provide flexible support for user needs. We introduce salience functions as a mechanism to provide post hoc explanations of similarity, recommendations, and spatial placement. This post hoc strategy allows our approach to complement a variety of underlying algorithms; the salience functions provide both exemplar- and feature-based explanations at scales ranging from individual documents through to the entire corpus. These explanations are incorporated into a set of views that operate at multiple scales. The views use design elements that explicitly support comparison to enable flexible integration. Together, these form an approach that provides a flexible toolset that can address a range of tasks. We demonstrate our approach in a prototype system that enables the exploration of corpora of paper abstracts and newspaper archives. Examples illustrate how our approach enables the system to flexibly support a wide range of tasks and workflows that emerge in user scenarios. A user study confirms that researchers are able to use our system to achieve a variety of tasks.