SuperProvenanceWidgets: Tracking and Visualizing Analytic Provenance Across UI Control Elements

TL;DR

SuperProvenanceWidgets extends provenance tracking to multiple UI controls, aiding workflow auditing, bias mitigation, and UI design, with open-source availability for developers.

Contribution

It introduces a new SuperWidget that tracks and visualizes provenance across multiple UI controls, enhancing analysis and usability.

Findings

Enables cross-control provenance visualization for user interactions.

Assists in auditing workflows and identifying exploration biases.

Supports UI design and personalization through provenance insights.

Abstract

ProvenanceWidgets is an existing JavaScript library that tracks the recency and frequency of user interactions with individual UI controls (e.g., range sliders and dropdowns) and dynamically overlays this provenance onto them. In this work, we introduce SuperProvenanceWidgets, an extension to ProvenanceWidgets featuring a new SuperWidget that similarly tracks and visualizes provenance but across multiple UI controls, enabling users to understand how, when, and whether different UI controls were used. Through three example usage scenarios, we demonstrate how this cross-control SuperWidget helps (a) audit and share analysis workflows, (b) surface and mitigate exploration biases, and (c) facilitate user interface design and personalization. We also perform a technical self-assessment using the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations to evaluate the library's usability for developers. SuperProvenanceWidgets is integrated into the ProvenanceWidgets library and is available as open-source software at ProvenanceWidgets.github.io, empowering developers to build advanced provenance applications.