Replacing "rating" with "emojis"? Asking for your thoughts

timo

Currently, you can pick a "rating" between 1 and 5 stars to "rate" your day. This is pretty limited and doesn't allow for a lot of personalization.
Therefore I thought if it would make sense to remove the rating and introduce a "emoji" (mood) picker where you can select one emoji per entry that is then shown in the same location that is currently occupied by the rating stars.
The following problems / questions would come up with this:

How to migrate the ratings to the new emojis? Perhaps simply "translate" a 1 star rating to a 😭 emoji and a 5 star rating to a 😁?
Should the app offer a fixed set of emojis to choose from or should it allow any kind if emoji (or text character for that matter) to be selected?
Should the app present some kind of "previously picked" emoji suggestions to make adding them easier?
Should the emojis presented anywhere else in the app (outside the entry detail view) and if yes, where and how?

Would love to hear your thoughts on this idea! 🙂

RobertSpencer

timo The following problems / questions would come up with this:
How to migrate the ratings to the new emojis? Perhaps simply "translate" a 1 star rating to a 😭 emoji and a 5 star rating to a 😁?

That sounds like a good plan.

Should the app offer a fixed set of emojis to choose from or should it allow any kind if emoji (or text character for that matter) to be selected?

Fixed.

Should the app present some kind of "previously picked" emoji suggestions to make adding them easier?

Don't see the point of that if you only have 5 options.

Should the emojis presented anywhere else in the app (outside the entry detail view) and if yes, where and how?

Not that I can think of.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this idea! 🙂

I'm migrating from Journey and that has mood tracking, but I mostly consider it irritating. The only reason I click on it for the most part is because it's there, and I feel a compulsion to click everything put in front of me.

That being said I also keep a food diary and there the mood you are in does have meaning. So migrating from Journey I would want to preserve that information, but it could also have been added it to the text of the entry.

So please if you do add it put in a setting to hide it, so I don't feel compelled to use it. 😅

ErinThompson

I apologize for suggesting more work for you, Timo: If you are willing to keep the stars and add emojis, I think that would be the best of both worlds. Personally, I like the simplicity of the stars, and I suspect I will continue to use the stars system, even if emojis become available. With that said, I think there are several other diary apps that do make use of emojis, so that may be a feature that people are accustomed to. if you were to add emojis, then I think allowing people to choose their own would be a nice touch, and allow for great customization with more personal meaning. The "previously picked" option would facilitate quick entry once the person's system is initially established.
I can't think of other places outside of the entry detail view where I would find emojis valuable.
Thank you for your constant innovation!

redeyeshev

I like the star ratings. I think they're good as a rough way of marking how 'good' days were as a whole. I see a 1 star as a terrible day, 3 star as normal, and a 5 star as a peak experience and use these on my day log entries. Come to think of it, is there a way to show all entries of a particular rating?

I also get it that stars do not encompass the depth of feeling so feel emojis could be a good idea in addition to the stars as a sort of mood tracker. In which case, I think it would be good to allow the range of emojis with a previously picked selection for people to add to their entries easily.

I noticed that you can tag entries with emojis already, but I can't think of anywhere else in the app where they could be useful.

timo

Thanks for your feedback @ErinThompson and @redeyeshev!
Happy to hear the rating feature actually is being used. I wasn't sure about that because in most of the conversations I have with users, it is not being mentioned.

redeyeshev Come to think of it, is there a way to show all entries of a particular rating?

Yes you can filter by rating in the search page.

redeyeshev

timo Yes you can filter by rating in the search page.

Ahh yes, I'd forgotten. Thanks.

Ratings are really useful. It's good when reviewing the year to go back and look at all the best and worst days!

vladarehak

Rating is good and can be very handy when user have tons of records.

andydelz

Am currently using the Tracker function to track Moods in emojis already. Basically repurposing stars for rating Movies, TV shows (that i watched on the day), games that I played, books that I read. So when i track the activities, the stars rating information reminds me of how i rate that activity i did on the entry.

Gary

I always use the rating feature but I think it would be good to have emojis too if possible.

AstridParris

If using both stars and variable emojis is too much work to include, then I would prefer to keep the stars. Thank you for this nice and easy to use app.

EAPTCB

For me, both star ratings and emojis would be wunderbar! Currently, I use star ratings for something quite different to what they were intended for: I use the stars to rate Movies and TV Shows which I review and rate. This way If I want to find a good Movie or TV show I just search by star rating. I suppose other users could adopt the same idea to rate their own hobbies; for example Wines, Restaurants, Food etc.

For my daily non movie-review journal entries, the emoji option would be fantastic because I can track my mood with emojis and use the star rating system exclusively just to track my movies 🙂

@timo Would it be possible to have the stars incrementing in half ratings? sometimes I want to rate a movie 4.5 stars but have to choose from 4 or 5 which is a big difference.

timo

EAPTCB Would it be possible to have the stars incrementing in half ratings? sometimes I want to rate a movie 4.5 stars but have to choose from 4 or 5 which is a big difference

Feel free to create a feature request for it. However, at the moment, the "rating" column type in the SQLite database is set to "integer", so doesn't support fractional numbers. I would have to do some change in the database structure when doing a new database migration

grtrttutyu

I prefer if the rating is displayed as an emoticon on the UI. So a "happy face" instead of "*****". You instantly know what it means "excellent".

Backend could be numeric. If people want to export it into excel or csv format, then it is easier to compare entries with numbers.

Jeroentb

Hi @timo !

This would be welcome! For myself I created a tracker but when replacing or getting an option for the rating under a single button would be great!

Sam Nope

I like the star rating for it's simplicity. Sometimes I can be paralyzed by too many choices and wind up not using the feature at all, but I see the definite advantages others might get from emojis. I think a nice middle ground between allowing the user to select any set of emojis they want and including a set of emojis that translate over from the star system would be to including multiple different sets of emojis. So maybe the user doesn't like emoji set 1, but this way they could view multiple different sets -- maybe they find emoji set 2 is perfect, so they can use that one. So it gives us more options without being overwhelming or something.

Claudia

I wouldn't care if it was stars or emotions through smileys if the days in the calendar could be given a color. For example, green for a good day and red for a bad day. That way you could immediately recognize good and bad days, or you wouldn't have to search for a long time.

Ahrron

I looked for an Emoji Rating and didn't found it in the app.
I could imagine to create an Emoji Rating ON my own via adding several new contacts to my address book named with emojy. If i would Like to add an Emojy to my entry i only have to add the Emojy contact.
I also tried to add a feeling (numeric number) to the entry. But this faules. I can only search for entries which has a feeling. But then i will find all entries and Not only the entry with feeling 7,5.
Numerical number or Rating in a graph would also be useful.

Claudia

I have now found a solution for myself. This should work just as well with emojis.
The fact that photos are displayed as a preview image gave me the idea of saving colored images and attaching them. This gives me a good overview and makes it easier for me to find days.
To avoid having to search for a long time, I took screenshots because I regularly empty this folder. They are also only 1 kb in size.
This means that there are only 5 photos in it and they are easy to insert.
I used light green for a very good day, dark green for a good day, yellow for a neutral day, orange for a not so good day and dark red for a bad day.

Edit: Sorry, jpeg pictures have 1 kb, screenshots 175 kb.

Ahrron

Realized that you can add Emojis as tag to an entry. Therefore i can add feeling emojis to my entries.

WendyLizTownsend

How do you add emojis as a tag?

grtrttutyu

WendyLizTownsend You just need to paste an emoji when creating a tag. I use Android and many Android keyboards allow you to insert an emoji in text fields 😁 like this.