Visualization literacy shaped by measurement history and practice shift
Inheriting the Count: How Visualization Literacy Got Its Measure
Human-Computer InteractionComputers and Society
Summary
Visualization literacy, or understanding charts and graphs, has often been measured as a skill someone either has or doesn’t, focused on individual tests. The authors show that this way of thinking comes from old ideas about measuring reading skills, based on counting, individual ability, and clear right-or-wrong answers. They identify two phases: one that tests people’s chart skills, and a newer one that looks at how people actually use visualizations in real-life situations. This suggests that measuring alone can’t fully explain what literacy means or does.
What this means in practice
- •For data visualization designers: Design visualization tools that consider users’ real-world contexts and purposes, not just their testable skills.
- •For policy analysts: Develop assessment methods for data interpretation that reflect cultural and situational differences, moving beyond binary skill tests.
A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.
Authors
José Bener, Miriah Meyer
Abstract
Foundational frameworks in visualization have operationalized literacy as an individual competency, measured through chart-comprehension tasks. This focus raises a question: why has measurement become the dominant frame for understanding literacy? Rather than asking whether literacy should be measured, we ask how measurement became the field's way of understanding it. We trace visualization literacy back through the history of textual literacy and argue that in adopting the term, the field imported three values rooted in early government statistics: quantification, individualization, and binary classification. To mark the shift this history makes possible, we distinguish two waves: a first centered on assessment and individual proficiency, and a second that treats literacy as a situated practice, attentive to how people use visualizations in context and to the purposes they serve. Examining the construct this way suggests that refining assessment instruments does not, by itself, settle what literacy is, and points to directions for second-wave research: formative studies of literacy in context, culturally grounded instruments, and critical reading. This paper shows that visualization literacy inherited its measurement frame rather than discovering it, offers a two-wave vocabulary distinguishing assessment-based literacy from situated practice, and connects the field to a critical-literacy tradition with concrete alternatives to measurement. These contributions allow us to treat measurement and meaning as two parts of a single question, shifting attention from who counts as literate to what literacy is meant to do.