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The Evolution of Emojis for Sharing Emotions: A Systematic Review of the HCI Literature

Charles Chiang, Diego Gomez-Zara

TL;DR

The paper addresses how emojis for sharing emotions have evolved in HCI over the last decade by conducting a scoping systematic review of 42 studies drawn from ACM DL, IEEE Xplore, and WoS. It identifies two core themes: improving emoji discovery and selection, and augmenting emoji affordances through multimodal and context-rich designs (AR/VR/MR, biosignals, haptics, and auditory channels). The work reveals increasing customization, cross-modal representational strategies, and concerns around privacy and platform divergence, offering actionable implications for design, accessibility, and interoperability in CMC. The study advances understanding of how emoji-based emotion communication is transitioning from static icons to rich, personalized, multisensory expressions with significant implications for future HCI research and practice.

Abstract

With the prevalence of instant messaging and social media platforms, emojis have become important artifacts for expressing emotions and feelings in our daily lives. We ask how HCI researchers have examined the role and evolution of emojis in sharing emotions over the past 10 years. We conducted a systematic literature review of papers addressing emojis employed for emotion communication between users. After screening more than 1,000 articles, we identified 42 articles of studies analyzing ways and systems that enable users to share emotions with emojis. Two main themes described how these papers have (1) improved how users select the right emoji from an increasing emoji lexicon, and (2) employed emojis in new ways and digital materials to enhance communication. We also discovered an increasingly broad scope of functionality across appearance, medium, and affordance. We discuss and offer insights into potential opportunities and challenges emojis will bring for HCI research.

The Evolution of Emojis for Sharing Emotions: A Systematic Review of the HCI Literature

TL;DR

The paper addresses how emojis for sharing emotions have evolved in HCI over the last decade by conducting a scoping systematic review of 42 studies drawn from ACM DL, IEEE Xplore, and WoS. It identifies two core themes: improving emoji discovery and selection, and augmenting emoji affordances through multimodal and context-rich designs (AR/VR/MR, biosignals, haptics, and auditory channels). The work reveals increasing customization, cross-modal representational strategies, and concerns around privacy and platform divergence, offering actionable implications for design, accessibility, and interoperability in CMC. The study advances understanding of how emoji-based emotion communication is transitioning from static icons to rich, personalized, multisensory expressions with significant implications for future HCI research and practice.

Abstract

With the prevalence of instant messaging and social media platforms, emojis have become important artifacts for expressing emotions and feelings in our daily lives. We ask how HCI researchers have examined the role and evolution of emojis in sharing emotions over the past 10 years. We conducted a systematic literature review of papers addressing emojis employed for emotion communication between users. After screening more than 1,000 articles, we identified 42 articles of studies analyzing ways and systems that enable users to share emotions with emojis. Two main themes described how these papers have (1) improved how users select the right emoji from an increasing emoji lexicon, and (2) employed emojis in new ways and digital materials to enhance communication. We also discovered an increasingly broad scope of functionality across appearance, medium, and affordance. We discuss and offer insights into potential opportunities and challenges emojis will bring for HCI research.
Paper Structure (33 sections, 3 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 33 sections, 3 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Sharing Emotions in Computer-Mediated Communication
  4. Emojis Evolution
  5. Transmitting emotions through emojis
  6. Methodology
  7. Eligibility Criteria for Inclusion of Articles
  8. Data Sources
  9. Article Selection
  10. Data Extraction and Synthesis
  11. Results
  12. Description of the Articles
  13. Article Classification
  14. Emotion Discovery with Emojis Made Simple
  15. Connecting Users to Emojis ($n=10$).
  16. ...and 18 more sections

Figures (3)

  • Figure 1: PRISMA Flow Diagram showing the article selection process
  • Figure 2: Publication years of the articles
  • Figure 3: Customization and Complexity are positively correlated, but not necessarily linear