Personal Emoji & GIF Usage Guide
Essays and updates on product, engineering, and AI by Chase Adams.
2 minute read
This is a brief guide to how I use Emoji and GIF and a few contextual notes about what Emoji I use, when I use them and what they mean to me.
Principles
- Unambiguous - use emoji and GIFs that may often have multiple meanings
- Enhancement - only use Emoji as an enhancement to an existing message
Norms
- GIF - I generally choose Adventure Time, Bluey or Muppets / non-human cartoon gifs
When I use Emoji
- reacting to a message in Slack or Discord
- enhancing an existing message for Twitter
- responding to a text where reactions are limited but words aren't necessary
How I Use Emoji
My most used public messaging Emoji:
- 🚀 - when I'm excited about something that's happening (shipping software or forward movement in work/side projects)
- ✨ - when I'm in awe of something someone has done or grateful for something that's happened/happening
- 🌱 - when someone (including myself) has a moment of self reflection or personal growth
My most used private (Slack/Messages) Emoji:
- ✅ - I have done something about this
- 👀 - I am looking into this (also, acknowledgement that I've seen something)
- 🦺 - I believe this is safe to try
My most used Emoji for Pull Request (code) reviews:
- ℹ️ - I am giving you context for this change
- ❓ / ❔ - I am asking an exploratory question based on my experience
- 📌 - I'm requesting this be changed
- ‼️ - I believe this could be problematic, can we discuss
Other Emoji I use:
- 🎉 - when I'm excited about something personal
- 💙 - when I've had a good moment with a peer
- 💜 - when someone has noticed a moment of personal growth for me
Emoji I try to avoid:
- most people faces and hand symbols
- 🔥 - ambiguous
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