At the Data Visualizaton Society’s 2024 Outlier conference, I was honored to present my talk on inclusive segmentations. It was a hybrid event that was both live recorded and presented at Midwestern University.

Often when it comes to visual representation a few common questions come up:

• What if we just didn’t use any photos to avoid profiling? Visuals are an accessibility tool, they reduce the cognitive load of reading pages of text and help us better understand information. When we forgo an image for segments, the audience often has to come up with their own image, which may be biased from their own experiences. As far as representation goes,

• How do we accurately represent demographic data without showing race, gender and profile information? This is where we can be creative! While demographic data is present, its often grounded in behavioral patterns. This talk will walk through a few ways to decipher behavioral information and support it with inclusive visuals.

• What is the harm in using a photo? Is there ever a time photos can be inclusive? When using a traditional single stock photo of a profile we are narrowing our identification of a segment to a single lone entity. Which means when distributing segment information it easily becomes magnified as the ‘default look’ for that segment. A more inclusive way to use photos would be to opt for collages or multiple photos of differently depicted people so the emphasis is on their behavior and less on their profile

I hope you enjoy the talk and please share how you visualize segments!