I’m experimenting with a new concept for tagging passages in the upcoming StoryMate beta.
This demonstrates a feature that uses emojis to organise passages. Those who know me know, I’m a fan of emojis – they make me smile. But do we like them enough to be part of an organising feature?
I’m sold on them, but I care about what everyone else thinks too!
So, what do you think? There’s more than one way to skin this cat:
• Do you like emojis in the top left of a passage?
• Or beside the passage name?
let’s take for example the rick choice passage: the top left can indicate the path and the nature of it (heart and bifurcation emoji) and on the other hand, the flame on the purple door can indicate, for example, that the passage led to consequences (flames, even immediately extingues, leaves some damage) so, a passage which is a bifurcation along a specific path and has consequences is marked clearly not only by emoji but also by the emoj’s position, which has different meaning for position; for example, a heart beside a passage indicates that the choice is related to love relationship, when at the top left indicates that the passage is related to the “love path”.
In other words, let’s give developers the max flexibility in marking passages, this can only enhance the advantage of visual editing, IMVHO.
Personally, I’m not a fan of emojis, at all. Maybe it’s due to my blindness, I don’t know, but emojis have always seemed like pointless clutter that only get in the way. Now, I can read and input emojis just fine, thanks to the screen readers I use supporting them, but I just don’t see a reason. Also, why emojis for tagging IF passages? That seems… Different.
Thanks so much for the feedback. After reading this I’m thinking there should probably be other options too. Notion lets you add “icons” to titles which are a mixture of emojis AND other icons. We could mix high contrasting other icons / icons into the mix as a means to address some forms of blindness. I guess I mean poor vision.
Our design thinking is to be different and to be minimilst. We don’t want to be a Twine clone and we don’t want to be a Ren.py clone. We want to make doing some of what those older tools do more fun and accessible online to non-coders.
Part of this work has led me towards learning about Gen Z trends and they definitely emojis.
What do you think would compliment emojis for you. I’m sure it’d be possible to serve everybody with the right thinking.
What about ascii emoticons? They serve the same purpose as emojis, but it’s much easier for me to just type out a colon and a right parenthesis, for example, than to pull up the emoji input panel in Windows and mess around with that clunky mess.
@blindHunter this is a StoryMate mockup depicting a possible future state - it contains an xmas gift emoji and a #thanks hashtag contained in a Merry Xmas passage. Although you might not be able to see it, it is indeed a playful thing from me to you :)
emojis.