Star ratings have become a staple for assessing review sentiment online. We see them all the time when we shop and can quickly associate whether a review is worth reading based on the 1 star vs 5 stars attached to the review. Given the popularity, I recently included star ratings by product in a dashboard designed for an executive audience. The visualization is intuitive and straight to the point. However, I started thinking why stars and not other shapes? To test out using other shapes, I kept it simple and fun. Star ratings, or in this case custom shape ratings