# Less or More: Towards Glanceable Explanations for LLM Recommendations Using Ultra-Small Devices

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.19410 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19410/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 82 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [BERTScore: Evaluating Text Generation with BERT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.09675/) (2019)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasoners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11916/) (2022)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Deep Inside Convolutional Networks: Visualising Image Classification Models and Saliency Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6034/) (2013)
- [Ego4D: Around the World in 3,000 Hours of Egocentric Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07058/) (2021)
- [Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.07269/) (2017)
- [Language Models Don't Always Say What They Think: Unfaithful Explanations in Chain-of-Thought Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04388/) (2023)
- [Counterfactual Explanations without Opening the Black Box: Automated Decisions and the GDPR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00399/) (2017)
- [Can LLMs Express Their Uncertainty? An Empirical Evaluation of Confidence Elicitation in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13063/) (2023)
- [Socratic Models: Composing Zero-Shot Multimodal Reasoning with Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00598/) (2022)
- [HateXplain: A Benchmark Dataset for Explainable Hate Speech Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10289/) (2020)
- [Does the Whole Exceed its Parts? The Effect of AI Explanations on Complementary Team Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14779/) (2020)
- [Selection-Inference: Exploiting Large Language Models for Interpretable Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.09712/) (2022)
- [Effect of Confidence and Explanation on Accuracy and Trust Calibration in AI-Assisted Decision Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02114/) (2020)
- [Physics of Language Models: Part 3.1, Knowledge Storage and Extraction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14316/) (2023)
- [Can language models learn from explanations in context?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02329/) (2022)
- [The Unreliability of Explanations in Few-shot Prompting for Textual Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03401/) (2022)
- [AI Transparency in the Age of LLMs: A Human-Centered Research Roadmap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01941/) (2023)
- [AnyMAL: An Efficient and Scalable Any-Modality Augmented Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16058/) (2023)
- [Neurons in Large Language Models: Dead, N-gram, Positional](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04827/) (2023)
- ["Why is 'Chicago' deceptive?" Towards Building Model-Driven Tutorials for Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05871/) (2020)
- [Who Should I Trust: AI or Myself? Leveraging Human and AI Correctness Likelihood to Promote Appropriate Trust in AI-Assisted Decision-Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05809/) (2023)
- [Graphologue: Exploring Large Language Model Responses with Interactive Diagrams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11473/) (2023)
- [Falling Rule Lists](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.5899/) (2014)
- [Understanding the Effect of Out-of-distribution Examples and Interactive Explanations on Human-AI Decision Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05303/) (2021)
- [Investigating Explainability of Generative AI for Code through Scenario-based Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.04903/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Interaction as Intelligence: Deep Research With Human-AI Partnership](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.15759/) (2025)
- [XAgen: An Explainability Tool for Identifying and Correcting Failures in Multi-Agent Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17896/) (2025)
- [SketchXplain: Intuitive Visual Explanations of Image Classifiers with Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.17646/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable potential in recommending everyday actions as personal AI assistants, while Explainable AI (XAI) techniques are being increasingly utilized to help users understand why a recommendation is given. Personal AI assistants today are often located on ultra-small devices such as smartwatches, which have limited screen space. The verbosity of LLM-generated explanations, however, makes it challenging to deliver glanceable LLM explanations on such ultra-small devices. To address this, we explored 1) spatially structuring an LLM's explanation text using defined contextual components during prompting and 2) presenting temporally adaptive explanations to users based on confidence levels. We conducted a user study to understand how these approaches impacted user experiences when interacting with LLM recommendations and explanations on ultra-small devices. The results showed that structured explanations reduced users' time to action and cognitive load when reading an explanation. Always-on structured explanations increased users' acceptance of AI recommendations. However, users were less satisfied with structured explanations compared to unstructured ones due to their lack of sufficient, readable details. Additionally, adaptively presenting structured explanations was less effective at improving user perceptions of the AI compared to the always-on structured explanations. Together with users' interview feedback, the results led to design implications to be mindful of when personalizing the content and timing of LLM explanations that are displayed on ultra-small devices.
