[2603.25624] Visual or Textual: Effects of Explanation Format and Personal Characteristics on the Perception of Explanations in an Educational Recommender System

Computer Science > Human-Computer Interaction arXiv:2603.25624 (cs) [Submitted on 26 Mar 2026] Title:Visual or Textual: Effects of Explanation Format and Personal Characteristics on the Perception of Explanations in an Educational Recommender System Authors:Qurat Ul Ain, Mohamed Amine Chatti, Nasim Yazdian Varjani, Farah Kamal, Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten View a PDF of the paper titled Visual or Textual: Effects of Explanation Format and Personal Characteristics on the Perception of Explanations in an Educational Recommender System, by Qurat Ul Ain and Mohamed Amine Chatti and Nasim Yazdian Varjani and Farah Kamal and Astrid Rosenthal-von der P\"utten View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Explanations are central to improving transparency, trust, and user satisfaction in recommender systems (RS), yet it remains unclear how different explanation formats (visual vs. textual) are suited to users with different personal characteristics (PCs). To this end, we report a within-subject user study (n=54) comparing visual and textual explanations and examine how explanation format and PCs jointly influence perceived control, transparency, trust, and satisfaction in an educational recommender system (ERS). Using robust mixed-effects models, we analyze the moderating effects of a wide range of PCs, including Big Five traits, need for cognition, decision making style, visualization familiarity, and technical expertise. Our results show that a well-designed visual, simple, interacti...