Lexara: A User-Centered Toolkit for Evaluating Large Language Models for Conversational Visual Analytics

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Palani, Srishti, Setlur, Vidya
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Palani, Srishti
Setlur, Vidya
author_facet Palani, Srishti
Setlur, Vidya
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming Conversational Visual Analytics (CVA) by enabling data analysis through natural language. However, evaluating LLMs for CVA remains a challenge: requiring programming expertise, overlooking real-world complexity, and lacking interpretable metrics for multi-format (visualizations and text) outputs. Through interviews with 22 CVA developers and 16 end-users, we identified use cases, evaluation criteria and workflows. We present Lexara, a user-centered evaluation toolkit for CVA that operationalizes these insights into: (i) test cases spanning real-world scenarios; (ii) interpretable metrics covering visualization quality (data fidelity, semantic alignment, functional correctness, design clarity) and language quality (factual grounding, analytical reasoning, conversational coherence) using rule-based and LLM-as-a-Judge methods; and (iii) an interactive toolkit enabling experimental setup and multi-format and multi-level exploration of results without programming expertise. We conducted a two-week diary study with six CVA developers, drawn from our initial cohort of 22. Their feedback demonstrated Lexara's effectiveness for guiding appropriate model and prompt selection.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_05832
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Lexara: A User-Centered Toolkit for Evaluating Large Language Models for Conversational Visual Analytics
Palani, Srishti
Setlur, Vidya
Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
Large Language Models (LLMs) are transforming Conversational Visual Analytics (CVA) by enabling data analysis through natural language. However, evaluating LLMs for CVA remains a challenge: requiring programming expertise, overlooking real-world complexity, and lacking interpretable metrics for multi-format (visualizations and text) outputs. Through interviews with 22 CVA developers and 16 end-users, we identified use cases, evaluation criteria and workflows. We present Lexara, a user-centered evaluation toolkit for CVA that operationalizes these insights into: (i) test cases spanning real-world scenarios; (ii) interpretable metrics covering visualization quality (data fidelity, semantic alignment, functional correctness, design clarity) and language quality (factual grounding, analytical reasoning, conversational coherence) using rule-based and LLM-as-a-Judge methods; and (iii) an interactive toolkit enabling experimental setup and multi-format and multi-level exploration of results without programming expertise. We conducted a two-week diary study with six CVA developers, drawn from our initial cohort of 22. Their feedback demonstrated Lexara's effectiveness for guiding appropriate model and prompt selection.
title Lexara: A User-Centered Toolkit for Evaluating Large Language Models for Conversational Visual Analytics
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05832