Speaking of font differences, the default Windows emoji font is so bad I don't understand why Google doesn't just ship their Android emoji font with Chrome and default to that.
"Funny" thing about the Windows emoji font, is that flags are not included. I guess Microsoft is worried it can hurt their business (e.g. Israeli flag, Palestinian flag, Taiwanese flag, etc...).
So, if you need flag icons for any reason (e.g. phone number country code input), you'd have to use a different emoji font.
The comments on that article are hilarious. Never in my life would I have expected someone to complain about a lack of professionality in an emoji set. Since when are emoji professional?
If you're asking whether we use emoji in professional setting to convey important information, yes, we do, in spades.
Imagine you see an alert in slack about a critical system. You can type a full sentence to explain you've seen it and will investigate what's happening, or you can stick an :eyes: reaction on it and actually focus on investigating.
Same if you want someone to wait a bit because you're thinking etc.
You can always type full sentences to convey the same information, but in a professional setting conciseness and efficiency are also valuable, right ?
Agreed. It's not just about smiley faces. I use all the little caution signs, clocks, hourglasses etc in UI design all the time. Easiest way to get icons in places they are a pain to put.
There's a blurriness, but it's still pretty workable. You won't ask someone to look at a problem by sticking eyes on it, that needs a lot more communication.
But you can look at an issue, see there 3 of your coworkers sticking an eyes emoji on it, and mention them when asking what they think it, get clarification if they've just seen and didn't care, are still digging deeper etc.
In a way, the imprecision is what gives the versatility, otherwise many emoji get a more limited, standardized meanings over time. Like a "done" sticker that will be enough to give a status on a request on a channel, a thumbs up on a proposition, or a green checkmark on things that explicitely needed to be checked.
At least the last couple of years. In fact, actual court cases have been fought about their meaning, those cases included actual depictions to try to point out that some were meant to be whimsical, and some were meant to be serious.
I quite liked them as well. Made them very readable even in small sizes.
But then again, I also loved the Android's old blob emojis[0]. Some specific ones were weird but mostly I really liked the amount of personality and movement they were able to express. But as far as I've been able to tell, most people seemed to hate them, for whatever reason.
Most people I know really enjoyed the blobs too. I never bought Google's justification for the redesign, and I don't think they ever published hard data about it.
So, if you need flag icons for any reason (e.g. phone number country code input), you'd have to use a different emoji font.