Development of Emoticon Based on Emotional Vocabulary Model

Abstract

Mobile SNS(Social Network Service) messengers have been generally used communication as users communicate and exchange information through network. However, mobile SNS messengers have limitations in recognizing detailed emotions, as communication occurs without facial expressions and gestures. Emoticon is widely used for emotional communication as a way to overcome these limitations. For this reason, many users often use emoticons to express their specific emotions. As the usage of emoticons has increased, emoticons have been rapidly developed by individual artists as well as companies. However, emoticons without proper design guidelines has been interpreted differently by individual users, causing communication errors. It could make difficult to find the right emoticon for emotional expression. Therefore, this study researched emoticons for users' efficient emotional communication in mobile SNS environments to create design guidelines for emoticons and develop emoticons that following the guidelines. Then, the effects of emotional communication on emoticons verified by statistical analysis. Emoticon design guidelines created in the results of this study and emotional emoticons following the guidelines are expected to be used as positive ways to enhance the effectiveness of emotional expression.