EmojiZoom: emoji entry via large overview maps 😄🔍

Abstract

Current soft keyboards for emoji entry all present emoji in the same way: in long lists, spread over several categories. While categories limit the number of emoji in each individual list, the overall number is still so large, that emoji entry is a challenging task. The task takes particularly long if users pick the wrong category when searching for an emoji. Instead, we propose a new zooming keyboard for emoji entry. Here, users can see all emoji at once, aiding in building spatial memory where related emoji are to be found. We compare our zooming emoji keyboard against the Google keyboard and find that our keyboard allows for 18% faster emoji entry, reducing the required time for one emoji from 15.6 s to 12.7 s. A preliminary longitudinal evaluation with three participants showed that emoji entry time over the duration of the study improved at up to 60 % to a final average of 7.5 s.