Characterizing Data Visualization Literacy: a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract: With the advent of the data era, and of new, more intelligent interfaces for supporting decision making, there is a growing need to define, model and assess human ability and data visualizations usability for a better encoding and decoding of data patterns. Data Visualization Literacy (DVL) is the ability of encoding and decoding data into and from a visual language. Although this ability and its measurement are crucial for advancing human knowledge and decision capacity, they have seldom been investigated, let alone systematically. To address this gap, this paper presents a systematic literature review comprising 43 reports on DVL, analyzed using the PRISMA methodology. Our results include the identification of the purposes of DVL, its satellite aspects, the models proposed, and the assessments designed to evaluate the degree of DVL of people. Eventually, we devise many research directions including, among the most challenging, the definition of a (standard) unifying construct of DVL.