These days, emojis are pretty popular, and many people wonder why it took this long for Apple to introduce emojis on their iOS devices. Emoji is the most widely spoken and rapidly growing language globally, making sense since 90% of the internet population uses emojis daily. Approximately three billion people have used emojis, which is insane. Today, 50% of communication is done through technology, and Unicode emoji facilitates it. If you don't use a Unicode emoji, your conversation feels plain and flat, lacking emotions. By now, you are probably an emoji fan and use them in your everyday communication.
When Were Emojis Used For The First Time?
The history of emojis goes back to the 19th century. They're older than you'd expect. There were emoticons before emojis, which were human emotions constructed using punctuation marks. The first emoticons were published in an edition of Puck magazine in 1881. The journal named the four "faces" it published "typographical art" since they conveyed pleasure, grief, neutrality, and surprise.
They were first used as a means of expressing feelings online in 1982. When the line between jokes and profound messages blurred on a virtual noticeboard at Carnegie Mellon University, faculty member Scott Fahlman devised a remedy: To indicate funny posts, use the symbol:-), and to indicate profound messages, use the symbol:-(.
Now, coming to contemporary emojis were designed in 1998 by Shigetaka Kurita, an engineer of the Japanese cellphone firm NTT Docomo. He was developing an icon-based communication system for consumers. He came up with a collection of 176 symbols that he termed emojis. The term "emoji" is a combination of two Japanese words: "e" (image) and "moji" (character). Kurita claims he got his ideas for emojis from manga, Chinese characters, and global toilet signs.
First, they were emoticons.
They called it "Typographical art."
They surfaced online in 1982, expressed through symbols.
A Japanese engineer designed an icon-based. communication system called "emoji."
Today, more than 1,800 emojis exist, making our communication more accessible and more fun.
Unicode
Unicode is a coding system that allows computers to display characters from various languages. For example, the Greek letter alpha can be written in Unicode as α. Encode and decode programs convert characters into code so that computers can understand them.
Emojis are pictorial representations of facial expressions or feelings. These days emojis are used more than emoticons and are very widely accepted around the globe in digital communication. Like any other language, some emojis have become icons with different meanings altogether. They can also be used in chats to convey emotions such as anger, happiness, love, etc.
Unicode Emojis
Unicode is a universal character encoding standard for software. It enables computers to convert characters into numeric codes and back again. Unicode provides an encoding for every character from all significant languages, making it possible to send and receive texts in any language. Unicode Emojis are special symbols specific to Unicode, including cartoonish faces and body parts. These emojis can be accessed on mobile devices by typing their names with a keyboard or copying/pasting the image into the message you're sending.
Emojis were introduced in the Unicode in 2010
Kat Momoi, Mark Davis, and Markus Scherer, members of the Google team, were intrigued by emojis that developed in Japanese smartphone culture. Yasuo Kida and Peter Edberg, two Apple developers, started the dialogue in 2009. They presented an official application comprising 625 new emojis to Unicode, a nonprofit group that has been maintaining guidelines in digital communications since 2007. Emoji were embedded in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, greatly expanding their visibility and allowing them to be used on all computers.
What is Unicode?
Unicode is a way to represent text on computers. It assigns a number to each character and allows for the representation of different languages through one system. Unicode has become the standard for displaying text across all platforms and devices, including iOS and Android.
How Unicode Increased Emoji Inclusivity?
In 2015, Unicode moved towards emoji diversity by allowing users to adjust their skin color. It was a way to increase emoji inclusivity and attract all ethnicities. After that, emojis have begun to show an interest in and representation of the ethnic variety.
Now, there are multiple skin tones users can select from. It also gives a sense of personalization which keeps users coming back.
Can Unicode Emojis Help You Enhance User Experience?
Facebook
The internet giant Facebook offers six emoji reactions to its users. They include Like, love, angry, haha, sad, and wow. Through emojis, Facebook personalizes users' feeds. In a statement, Facebook said that reacting to a post means users are interested in such posts. It also lets Facebook know that the person will want more posts. So, the algorithm keeps suggesting similar photos. Facebook considers other reactions "higher" than the Like. In contrast, the Love reaction is deemed equal to the other even though it has 50% of every response/emotion.
Instagram
Recently, Instagram has been pushing emojis. They've integrated them into every section of the app. When users open comments, the first thing appearing is emoji. Instagram instantly suggests responding through a Unicode emoji which is easy for users. Similarly, if users try to react to an Instagram story before typing text, emojis appear. The app has also added a react button in stories which is more convenient. The Instagram study indicated that posts with emojis generated 47.7% higher engagements, 56.5 percent of all users use emojis, and emoji use grew by 19 percent in 2016. In 2018, Instagram launched emoji face slider stickers, which basically boosts participation while also lessening the efforts to participate in polls. So, the app utilizes emojis to increase engagement and enhance user experience.
Snapchat
Snapchat uses emojis for several reasons. They've even taken to the next level; personalized emojis and animated cartoons. In Snapchat, when you make a shortcut/group for sending your snaps, you've to name it after a Unicode emoji. For example, if you made a shortcut for your family members, you can name it a "home emoji." Similarly, you can use various emojis to represent the group of office colleagues, college friends, and close friends. Snapchat records communications between people and groups and assigns various emojis based on how close they are. Emojis will not display or vanish if no communication takes place for an extended period of time. For instance, a baby with feeder emoji means that it's a new friend. When you interact a lot with someone by sending regular snaps, a fire "lit" emoji appears in their inbox. While the "yellow heart" means that you two are best friends because you've sent the most snaps to that person. Moreover, you can make personalized avatars for your display photo or live 3D video avatars. So, the app is making good use of the Unicode emojis and making the experience smoother.
Where To Integrate Unicode Emoji?
Unicode Emoji can help you create a better user experience in the following ways:
- Tables
Using Unicode Emojis instead of generic symbols and icons may provide a more accurate understanding of what the data means to your end-users. So, anyone looking to extract particular data from raw information can utilize tabular reports with emoji column sections.
It'll make the whole experience easy and smooth. So, make sure to use some relevant fun emojis and enhance the user experience.
- Integrate Relevant Emoji In the Headings
Every website and app has headings and labels. Every heading has a specific purpose and message to convey. These are used to grab attention and reflect the overall voice of the website or app. So, integrate emojis instead of filling those spaces with blocks of plain text that are hard to read. You can convey a particular message to your readers and visitors through each Unicode emoji. The Unicode emoji will effectively communicate with potential clients and clarify the text's tone. Adding a Unicode emoji in every heading and label can take the user-experience differently.
- Notifications
In the last several years, promotional strategies have changed significantly. It has attracted much interest from viewers, from TV commercials to large billboards and newspaper adverts. However, the emergence of digital marketing has completely transformed advertising messages. Promotional collaterals such as videos and photos play a significant role in digital marketing and advertising. However, this implementation is sometimes affected by the communication medium or commercial space limitations. This is particularly true when the information is presented in a tab in a web browser or on a cellphone through a push notification. Furthermore, people are less interested in your promotional messages than they have been in the past. People are more likely to interact with companies or goods they like. They ignore messages from other brands.
So, how can you deal with this never-ending problem of establishing credibility, increasing engagement, and getting noticed via a push notification system? Well, the solution may surprise you. Emojis are an unusual component that may help you boost the effectiveness of your push notifications by up to 85 percent. Since the introduction of emojis, they have become an integral element in expressing our emotions online. Integrating a Unicode emoji in notifications is a great way to engage users and enhance their experience. You must have seen every major brand using a Unicode emoji in their messages. For example, the ridesharing app Uber uses the car emoji in its notifications. Many stock market apps use the Unicode emoji "rocket" to indicate the rise in a specific stock. You can see other brands doing the same. Using emojis is now vital in every digital platform, including Facebook, Instagram, and other online applications.
- Dropdown options
Users often scan these items looking for information that meets their needs. Such lists are usually monotonous, and users can click the wrong options. To break the monotony, minimize errors, and make the interface straightforward, you should add Unicode emojis. A Unicode emoji for each option will make them more visually appealing and easy. This is one way to enhance user experience with Unicode emojis.
- Automations
If you're using automation or notifications in your Custom App, you can let your users know how they were triggered by adding a little bit of fun! Unicode support is also available for automatic email and Text reminders, enabling you to customize them with any emoji or symbol.
Let AppMaster Assist You
AppMaster allows you to add Unicode emojis in your procedures to construct advanced Triggered Actions and Periodic Activities. You may now create new process situations by referencing Unicode characters being changed, added, or removed in your system. Unicode support is also available for automatic email and SMS notifications, enabling you to customize them with any emoji or symbol. AppMaster enables you to present Unicode emojis depending on the outcomes of your formulas or any conditional logic for highly tech-related customers that have to enhance existing web applications with precise statistics and unique coding. The happy smile emoji, for example, might be used to indicate that a project has been completed.
Conclusion
Since the introduction of Unicode emoji, it has been used extensively by social media giants and other apps and websites. Its accessibility increased with Unicode, extending to all regular computers and web apps. Today, every online communication utilizes Unicode emoji to convey the message effectively. Research shows that using emojis is more effective and convenient for expressing emotions. Therefore, apps such as Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and many others have adopted emojis. So far, emojis have increased their post and story engagement while making it easy for users to respond to posts. So, it's essential to add relevant emojis in the right places in your app to enhance user experience and engagement.
