Is replacing icons with emoji a good idea?

Question

I'm currently polishing an application I have built using fontawesome. Due to fontawesome's pretty huge (nearly 2 MB with the more accessible SVG + JS Version) footprint, I'm considering to utilize emoji instead. These are already on every machine and users should be used to them.

I think it might be a good idea since using icons the users already associate with their meaning might make it easier for them to quickly understand what a button does, even without reading the associated text. This would be especially good for illiterate, visually impaired or dyslexic users.

There still is the text for screen reader users and the icons are wrapped inside elements that are hidden from them.

The only caveat I can come up with is that Apple doesn't allow apps that use emoji in their interface sometimes. However this application is company internal and will never show up on any app store so I don't think this would be an issue.

As far as I can tell, all users have OSes that support emoji.

Is there anything I'm missing?

Answer 1

It just is ❌ a 👍️ 💡. 👀 👇️:

• your application will 👀 unprofessional ➕, as someone 👈️ out, 🧒-ish;
• consider users with older systems or machines - they will ❌ be able to 👀 your emojis ➕ might get 😕;
• often 👥 will misinterpret emojis that their peers 📦️➡️ to ➡️👥. ➡️👤 do ❌ 🙏 to have a sudden misunderstanding between 🆗 ➕ apparently also 🆗 emoji like this: 🙆;
• some emojis take a 🥈 to guess the meaning of, as opposed to the actual text which users 🥫 just 👤📖;
• ➕ finally, they are just annoying to 👤📖 in a non-informal text message environment.

🔮 this helps. 😄

PS: here is the actual text without emojis:

It just is not a good idea. See below:

• your application will look unprofessional and, as someone pointed out, child-ish;
• consider users with older systems or machines - they will not be able to see your emojis and might get confused;
• often people will misinterpret emojis that their peers send to them. You do not want to have a sudden misunderstanding between OK and apparently also OK emoji like this: Face with OK Gesture;
• some emojis take a second to guess the meaning of, as opposed to the actual text which users can just read;
• and finally, they are just annoying to read in a non-informal text message environment.

Hope this helps. smile

Answer 2

You can use emoji. You could try the open-source Noto Emoji font which is b&w, but using emoji is no different from the colour icons of 10 years ago.