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Computational algorithms can provide novel, compelling functionality for interactive systems. However, designing such systems for users whose expertise lies outside computer science poses novel and complex challenges. This paper focuses specifically on the domain of designing interactive topic modeling visualizations to support interpretivist scholars. It describes a co-design process that involved working directly with two such scholars across two different corpora. The resultant visualization has both several similarities and key differences with other topic modeling visualizations, illustrated here using both the final design and discarded prototypes. The paper’s core contribution is an attention to how our emphasis on interpretation played out, both in the design process and in the final visualization design. The paper concludes by discussing the kinds of issues and tensions that emerged in the course of this work, as well as the ways that these issues and tensions can apply to much broader contexts of designing interactive algorithmic systems.