Poll options are ordinary text, which means they can carry custom emoji. Each choice gets a symbol in front of it, and the list stops being five similar-looking lines.
It is a formatting detail that changes how many people bother to vote, which is the only number a poll has.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Put emoji into poll options and the question.
- check_circle Make a poll readable in one glance.
- check_circle Know what non-subscribers see instead.
- check_circle Avoid the version that makes voting harder.
Emoji are typed into the option fields like any other text when the poll is written.
how_to_vote A poll is read at speed or not at all
Most polls are met the way most things in a busy group are met: a two-second glance while scrolling. Five lines of similar text in that moment is work, and work at that moment means scrolling past.
A symbol in front of each option removes the reading. The choices become distinguishable shapes, the eye picks the one it wants, and the tap happens before any decision to engage was consciously made. That is the whole mechanism and it is worth more than it sounds.
The same applies to the question. A poll whose question needs reading twice gets answered by the people who were going to answer anyway, which is a self-selected group and not the room. Short question, distinguishable options, and the vote count roughly doubles for no other reason.
It works best when the symbol carries the meaning rather than decorating it. A poll about lunch with a picture of each dish is instantly navigable; the same poll with five sparkles in front of five text options is exactly as hard to read as before, plus clutter.
Four ways to use them
The third is where it stops helping.
interests One symbol per idea
linear_scale Ordered answers
warning Where it turns into noise
groups Using the group's own emoji
One symbol per option, carrying the meaning, and the text still has to stand alone.
settings Writing one
- Create the poll as usual From the attachment menu.
- Write the options as plain text first They must work without symbols.
- Put one emoji at the start of each Chosen to mean the option.
- Leave the question plain Something has to be restful.
- Use the group's own set if it has one Everybody sees those.
- Check no two options share a symbol Before sending.
This page makes one poll easier to answer. The curriculum step is the wider set of things people can tap: buttons attached to messages, what each can trigger, and designing an interaction where the response leads somewhere.
At a glance
- 1Emoji in polls
Premium users can add custom emoji to poll options.
- 2Meaning, not decoration
Use emoji that make options easier to read.
- 3Fallback
Others may see the standard emoji, so text must still work.
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