Linking Assignment 3 – Task 6: An Emoji Story

I decided to do my third linking assignment on Ryan’s emoji story because I connected with his ideas and I enjoyed the layout of Ryan’s website.

Ryan Dorey’s Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/ryandoreyinetec540/2020/06/18/%F0%9F%87%A8%F0%9F%87%A6-%F0%9F%8E%A5-%F0%9F%91%A6%F0%9F%92%8A%F0%9F%98%A3-%F0%9F%86%9A-%F0%9F%8C%8E/

My Blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/melomart/2020/06/19/emoji-story-plot/

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Retrieved from: https://emojikeyboard.io/

Ryan and I both used WordPress so I was familiar with navigating around it.  However, our textural architecture is different.  I had headings for the list of my tasks and past comments from people to the right of my post.  I this is useful for the reader in the event they want to go to another page, it’s just one click.  I also had my comment page at the bottom of my post for people to easily comment on after reading.  This was a bit challenging to find in Ryan’s website.  The tabs for tasks and the linking assignment for Ryan’s website were categorized at the top of the page and he also included a biography.  Having the tabs at the top created a cleaner page with less distraction.  I like that the weekly tasks where each numbered since it allowed the reader to jump to the post they want easily, though to do this required an extra click.

I find it interesting that I wrote my emoji story from left to right with periods and then did a return sweep to the left again.   Ryan had one line for his emoji sentence with a page break to show the end of a paragraph.  We both started with the title and then built the emoji story from this.  In his post, Ryan made a valid point in mentioning that non-verbal cues such as facial expressions or gestures were difficult to portray when just using emoji, while I felt that emoji allows the reader to get to the point without the pleasantries one does in a real conversation.  However, we had the same thought that this made it difficult to have connection you would have in real life and sometimes meaning may get confused.

The only difficulty I found attempting the emoji task was finding the specific emoji I wanted, but perhaps that’s part of the point.  At first glance, the emojikeyboard looked like it had a lot of emojis but categories were limited.  This exercise was definitely thought provoking, because most of us use emojis in our text without thinking too much of it. It’s an easy short cut to typing the word or sentence.  But unless you know the person well at the other end of the conversation, meaning may get misinterpreted as emojis revolve around association and therefore may not convey the same meaning.  This makes me wonder if some emojis are culturally specific?  Additionally, since emojis conveys an idea without the specifics, then it would be a struggle to have meaningful conversations at a deeper level.