Who are your users? Improving the user experience The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators Spring 2020 Overcome user pain points Continue to explore the technology behind mobile phones Read a case study on implementing S1000D Have an adventure in technical communication Communicator Communicator Spring 2020 14 User experience Improving the user experience with emojis Can adding well-known images enhance your documentation to make it more visually appealing? Jamie Nickerson shares his experience. From a Chevrolet press release (#ChevyGoesEmoji) to a Nigerian political campaign, emojis are arguably increasingly being used in messaging, so much that they are really becoming their own language, especially if you consider the two examples above. Some argue they are overly informal and shouldn’t be used in technical documentation, while others, including myself, would say they enhance a user’s reading experience, especially if the little pictures appeal to the audience you’re writing for. This article will quickly run through three points that I would like to make about the Japanese-born images. Defining terms It’s probably best if we define what I mean by an emoji in this article, and how it differs from its cousins, the emoticon and the smiley. An emoji is a graphic symbol that’s used in electronic messages and web pages. An emoticon is a pictorial representation of a facial expression that uses characters, such as punctuation marks, numbers, and letters to express a mood or feeling. A smiley is a stylised representation of a smiling humanoid face that’s part of popular culture worldwide. Organisation Emojis are a great way to break up lengthy articles and grab your reader’s attention. For example, check out the headings (see Figures) in this set of internal, company- wide release notes. Not only are emojis great for dividing a wall of text with their flashy colours, but they can also be used as ‘mental markers’ for your readers. For any team members looking for the most recent bug fixes, they simply scan the article for a bug emoji. The same applies for any new product improvements; team members can easily locate these by looking for the sparkle emoji. As a side note, since using the emojis in A bug emoji is a great way to visually communicate bug fixes in an article. You can use a sparkle emoji to visually communicate what’s new in a set of release notes. the release note headings, my team and I have received a lot of positive feedback from other departments — they can now find what they’re looking for with much more efficiency. Appealing to different intelligences In 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner developed his Theory of Multiple Intelligences. In brief, there are nine different branches of intelligence and they influence the way people, in our case readers, learn. If we apply these intelligences to a technical writing project, the most obvious one is verbal-linguistic intelligence, the preferred learning style of people who take information in better when ideas are expressed through the written or spoken word — the foundation of the majority of technical documentation. But what about readers who take in information better when the presentation is visual, might they have a preference for learning through images, that is, spatial-visual intelligence? Images are also a common element in technical documentation, but sometimes you don’t need images because a document may be short, or an image won’t make sense in the document, or task completion is intuitive and the user doesn’t need to be shown. However, as mentioned above, adding emojis to your headings or copy can make the difference between a reader becoming frustrated because they have to sift through written information while trying to find the solution to their problem, or them being able to instantly find what they’re looking for through visual cues and being able to quickly resolve their issue. In short, emojis can appeal to those readers who are more receptive to visual information. However, keep in mind that if you use too many emojis, you then risk overstimulating your readers, therefore your efforts will be futile since you’ve frustrated them with too many distractions. Not the outcome you want when creating technical content! A word of caution Although emojis can be excellent additions to any article, there’s a downside. What emojis mean in one culture may mean something completely different in another culture. For example, the clapping hands emoji ( ) means praise or congratulations in the West. However, in China, this emoji signifies sexual intercourse. Let this be a warning that you really have to be careful with your selections! This point also ties into a content writer’s worst nightmare: Communicator Spring 2020 15 misinterpretation. To avoid this and remain on the safe side, never replace words with emojis, simply because they can be misinterpreted, and this particularly applies if you’re writing for an international audience. Summary If I haven’t sold you on my points above, that’s fine — emojis are quite new in the grand scheme of writing. They first appeared in the 1990s, and since then, they’ve shown no signs of going away. I would like to back that statement up with the fact that, in 2015, the Oxford English Dictionary made ‘ ’ (face with tears of joy emoji) their word of the year. As content writers and content enthusiasts, we need to be at the forefront of how our readers are absorbing and interpreting information. As I’ve argued above, emojis can completely enhance your writing, or they can disconnect it from your readers. It’s up to us as writers and content enthusiasts to craft and find a commonly accepted way of using them, so that we can ensure our readers a stress-free and informative experience. C Jamie Nickerson MISTC is a Dalhousie University English Literature graduate with a certification in Technical Writing. He has close to five years of Technical Writing experience. E: jamie.nickerson@dotdigital.com LI: www.linkedin.com/in/jamieanickerson References Chevrolet (2015) ‘#ChevyGoesEmoji’. Chevrolet. 22 June 2015. https://media. chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/ en/2015/jun/0622-cruze-emoji.html (accessed 3 February 2020). Emoji. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoji (accessed 5 February 2020). Emojipedia. https://emojipedia.org (accessed 5 February 2020). Emoticon. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon (accessed 5 February 2020). Northern Illinois University, Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center (2012) ‘Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences’. www.niu.edu/facdev/_ pdf/guide/learning/howard_gardner_theory_multiple_intelligences.pdf (accessed 3 February 2020). Oxford Languages (2015) ‘Word of the Year 2015’ https://languages.oup.com/ word-of-the-year/2015 (accessed 3 February 2020). Pardes A (2018) ‘The WIRED Guide to Emoji’ Wired. 1 February 2018. www.wired.com/story/guide-emoji (accessed 3 February 2020). People’s Democratic Party (PDP) (2019) ‘Atiku Abubakar, PDP Presidential Candidate, Launches World's First Emoji Manifesto to Target Nigeria's Youth Voters’. CISION PR Newswire. 6 February 2019. www.prnewswire.com/ae/news-releases/ atiku-abubakar-pdp-presidential-candidate-launches-world-s-first-emoji- manifesto-to-target-nigeria-s-youth-voters-885363839.html (accessed 3 February 2020). Rawlings A (2018) ‘Why emoji mean different things in different cultures’ BBC Future. 11 December 2018. www.bbc.com/future/article/20181211-why-emoji- mean-different-things-in-different-cultures (accessed 3 February 2020). Communicator further reading Hodgkinson R (2013) 'Creating and testing symbols to ISO standards' Communicator , Spring 2013: 56-58. Hofmann P (2011) 'Making icons make sense' Communicator , Winter 2011 special supplement: 4-7.