Emoji is the lowest-friction input type. The submission area shows a curated grid of around 120 mood-evocative emojis. Tap one to submit. That's the whole flow.
The Curated Set
The grid is grouped loosely by feeling so it scans intuitively:
- Happy and upbeat
- Calm and content
- Energetic and focused
- Proud and accomplished
- Thinking and curious
- Surprised and amused
- Tired and overwhelmed
- Stressed and worried
- Down and sad
- Frustrated and fired up
Skin-tone modifiers are deliberately omitted so the grid stays compact and identical emoji submissions stack into a single tile with a count badge. If you need a wider vocabulary, lean on the optional caption to add a few words.
The Tile Layout
Tiles render in a tight uniform grid: four columns on mobile, six on tablet, eight on desktop, 8px gap. Identical emojis collapse into a single tile with a count badge in the corner showing how many people picked it. Hovering shows the participant names. This makes the consensus emojis visually obvious and surfaces the outliers in their own tiles.
When To Use Emoji
Emoji is ideal when:
- The session is short and you want a fast pulse.
- The team is asynchronous and you need a low-friction prompt.
- The conversation that follows matters more than the input itself.
- You want the host's facilitate-view rollup to read at a glance.
It's less ideal when:
- The prompt invites long-form reasoning.
- The team is small enough that nobody's submission ever stacks - the count badge feature shines with five or more participants.
Tips For Hosts
- Cap submissions at one per person. The clarity of "one emoji each" is the whole point.
- Anonymous names work well here. The collapse-by-emoji behaviour gives a sense of group mood without singling people out.
- Pair Emoji with comments enabled. The interesting conversation is in "why did you pick that?".
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