Approximate reading time: 155 minutes

Podcast Hosted by Alie Ward

Here is one of my all time favourite podcasters, Alie Ward, interviewing world experts in the history, design, and psychology of emojis. Her scientist guests are fascinating. Here is a fun activity for you to try after listening to this interview in two parts. You may discover some of the emoji science we have covered in this chapter.

Create Your Own New Emoji

Step #1 – LISTEN to these two Podcast Part 1 and 2 (with transcript).

Step #2 – Create your own new emoji that you wish you could use to describe a subtle, unusual, wacky emotion that you sometimes feel.

Sneak Peak

In her interview with emoji psychology researchers and emoji designers Alie Ward asks the following questions:

• “What’s the most embarrassing emoji?”
• “Were you on the board when they decided to make the syringe not have blood gushing out of it?”
• “What do you think is the most underused emoji?
• “What’s the emoji that you’re like, “This one even exists?””
• “What’s one that you wish existed?”
• “And what about the actual nuts and bolts of drawing it?”
• “Do you remember the controversy with the squid?”
• “When you’re working with Unicode, where there’s a discussion about what’s coming up next, are there any emojis that are on the chopping block?”
• “Can I ask you some questions from listeners?”
• “Who decided to make the universal person emoji yellow?”
• “Don’t people associate yellow-people emojis as hate?”
• “Why do cats get facial expressions but not dogs?”

Alie also discusses the following topics with her curiology experts.

• Emoji fails
• That melting face emoji
• People Who Use Emojis Have More Sex
• Worth a thousand interpersonal words: Emojisas affective signals for relationship-oriented digital communication
• Tuned in on senders’ self-revelation: Emojis and emotional intelligence influence interpretation of WhatsApp messages
• Through a Gender Lens: Learning Usage Patterns of Emojis from Large-Scale Android Users
• Mining the relationship between emoji usage patterns and personality
• Expression and perception of identity through skin-toned emoji
• Emojis as Digital Gestures
• Creators of Emojis
• Aubergine and peach emojis are used to refer to human anatomy