
The merits of an emoji referral code - dontmitch
https://medium.com/the-mission/rethinking-referral-codes-or-11f1686bb964
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GuiA
Better is the enemy of good.

My grandma already has trouble finding characters like # on her keyboard, I
can't wait till I have to spend time on the phone with her guiding her to the
emoji she needs.

Does anyone know what the state is of screen readers, braille readers, and
other accessibility tools when it comes to emoji?

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x1798DE
I don't know the actual state of it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were
easy for screen readers to interpret emoji, since you just have to have it
read out the human-readable name accompanying the Unicode codepoint. You'd
presumably get "for free" any new emoji that are added. </wild speculation>

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dontmitch
You'd obviously want to limit the set of available emoji to avoid any
ambiguities but assuming you do—is there anything stopping their use in
frequent flier numbers, passwords, etc.?

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detaro
And people can reliably enter them on all platforms. Oh, wait...

I guess if you only enter codes inside your app and you build an emoji-
keyboard into the app it might work... ?

~~~
dontmitch
At this point, emoji support is almost ubiquitous (at least in the US). I'd
imagine that within the next couple of years emoji support will be within a
rounding error of 100%.

~~~
cocotino
There's no obvious way to type emojis on Windows 10. Also, most emojis are
almost unintelligible at small sizes because of the black and white font and
faulty ClearType rendering.

Most emojis aren't even visible on Windows 7.

~~~
dontmitch
Great point. Typing emojis on non-mobile devices is a pain right now.
Cmd+Ctrl+Space on Macs brings up an emoji-picker, but I doubt many people know
that.

I guess this should be scoped to mobile-only applications. Web services can
also use traditional referral links so a memorable referral code isn't as big
of a UX win.

~~~
cocotino
I think the idea is bad overall. Old versions of Android, still widespread,
can't enter emoji either.

Best referral code I've seen is a phone number: that way you know it's not
going to spread beyond the inner circle of family and friends of the referrer.
(Unless you don't want that, of course.)

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donretag
Using emojis to extend the available character set is taken off. Technologies
like the QR code did not catch on partially because they were co-opted by
marketers. Is it emojis turn?

[http://emoticode.com/](http://emoticode.com/)

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gumby
The ideal referral code is a clickable link. It's the same reason domain names
are fading: friction from issues like being too easy to mistype, hard to
remember, scammers etc.

Most apps let you message or mail a referral link to a friend.

~~~
dontmitch
That doesn't work all that well on mobile apps, since users first have to
download a new app before you can record the referral code. Having a link
click persist through that process is nearly impossible.

~~~
gumby
Make the link go to a web page with a "download app" link -- the app can start
and look for a cookie left by the web page.

Or simply download the app and click again.

I'm not saying not to have user-readable ref codes (though emojis are a
terrible choice -- you can't read them aloud), I'm saying make typing them the
very rare case.

