Towards Measuring Interactive Visualization Abilities: Connecting With Existing Literacies and Assessments

A team of researchers from institutions including the University of Maryland and the University of Edinburgh has published a position paper highlighting a critical gap in how we measure data literacy. The paper, titled 'Towards Measuring Interactive Visualization Abilities: Connecting With Existing Literatures and Assessments,' argues that the current gold-standard tests for visualization literacy, such as the Visualization Literacy Assessment Test (VLAT), are fundamentally limited because they only assess a person's ability to read static charts and graphs. In today's world of interactive business intelligence dashboards, tools like Tableau, and complex data exploration platforms, the ability to effectively interact with visualizations—through filtering, zooming, drilling down, and manipulating parameters—is arguably more important.

The authors propose a new research direction to formally define and assess these interactive visualization abilities. They connect this challenge to existing concepts in literacy and human-computer interaction, suggesting that effective measurement must go beyond simple comprehension to evaluate how users perform 'interactive sensemaking tasks.' This work, which has been accepted for a workshop at the prestigious CHI 2026 conference, lays the groundwork for developing new assessment tools that could better match the skills required by data analysts, scientists, and business professionals who work with modern, dynamic data tools every day.