Explaining AI Without Code: A User Study on Explainable AI

Abstract

The increasing use of Machine Learning (ML) in sensitive domains such as healthcare, finance, and public policy has raised concerns about the transparency of automated decisions. Explainable AI (XAI) addresses this by clarifying how models generate predictions, yet most methods demand technical expertise, limiting their value for novices. This gap is especially critical in no-code ML platforms, which seek to democratize AI but rarely include explainability. We present a human-centered XAI module in DashAI, an open-source no-code ML platform. The module integrates three complementary techniques, which are Partial Dependence Plots (PDP), Permutation Feature Importance (PFI), and KernelSHAP, into DashAI's workflow for tabular classification. A user study (N = 20; ML novices and experts) evaluated usability and the impact of explanations. Results show: (i) high task success ($\geq80\%$) across all explainability tasks; (ii) novices rated explanations as useful, accurate, and trustworthy on the Explanation Satisfaction Scale (ESS, Cronbach's $\alpha$ = 0.74, a measure of internal consistency), while experts were more critical of sufficiency and completeness; and (iii) explanations improved perceived predictability and confidence on the Trust in Automation scale (TiA, $\alpha$ = 0.60), with novices showing higher trust than experts. These findings highlight a central challenge for XAI in no-code ML, making explanations both accessible to novices and sufficiently detailed for experts.