Abstract

Emojis are widely used in digital communication, especially on phones. This makes them an important part of our multimedia experience. While most emojis are equally perceived among people, some are not. Using such emojis in UIs might lower the user experience. Furthermore, they should be used with care in communication. To get a better understanding of how people perceive emojis, we performed a survey on 15 emojis that potentially cause misunderstandings in digital communication. The responses from 1,811 participants help to interpret emojis used in online texts, as well as in text-based communication. In this article, we provide an experience report about the creation and performance of our survey as well as the results. The detailed discussion of 15 emojis provides future directions for research on how these are used. This forms the foundation for more detailed and specific future analyses aimed at exploring the potential causes of digital miscommunication.