[Andrew Ross]

I’m reading a report from the Urban Institute:Do No Harm Guide: Applying Equity Awareness in Data Visualization Jonathan Schwabish, Alice FengJune 9, 2021In its section 03 page 7 (quote below), it mentions the idea of sometimes showing person-shaped icons on a graph instead of more generic shapes. This would be especially nice if each case was info from one person, of course.So a feature request is: add an option in the paintbrush/Format dialog for a graph to use a person-shape instead of a circle for anything that currently uses circles.Perhaps the “Fuse dots into bars” could also change to “Fuse markers into bars” since markers is more generic than dots.quote from the report:”Unit charts and dot plots, which use multiple repeatedshapes to depict the data, might offer more opportunityto connect with the subject by reminding readers of thenumber of people represented, particularly if each dotrepresents one person.Taking this thinking one step further, the use of iconsinstead of abstract shapes such as circles and rectanglesmay also improve the ability of readers to empathize byreinforcing that they are looking at people and not justnumbers or statistics. As Tim Meko from the WashingtonPost told us, ‚ÄúThese are not just data points, and sowhen you add them as dots on a map, or lines on achart, I think you have to remember that these are truepeople.‚Äù Graphics that specifically represent people‚Äîtheanthropomorphizing of data graphics, or, as Jeremy Boyand colleagues refer to it, anthropographics (Boy et al.2014)‚Äîis sometimes seen as a way to evoke empathy(though Boy and his coauthors do not find this to be thecase; see also Groeger 2014). An example of a stacked barchart compared with a unit chart that uses icons is shownin figure 2″

[Bill Finzer]

Hello Andrew,Thanks for this excellent excerpt and suggestion. We originally planned to provide this, following the example of TinkerPlots but, somehow, we never got around to it. I’ll write a feature request and link to your post!Bill

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