Faces or numbers: where emoji work
Emoji suit a quick emotional reading: how was the lesson, how did the call go, how are you feeling about the week. «Rate from 1 to 10» feels heavy for one question; a row of faces does not.
They are weaker when you need fine distinctions or a metric with an established formula. For NPS keep the 0-10 scale; for comparing several items side by side a matrix works better.
Keep the scale the same across waves. Switching from three faces to five halfway through a term makes the averages incomparable.
3-point or 5-point emoji scale
The 3-point scale reads Poor, Fair, Excellent. It is the fastest version and fits kiosks, children and very short surveys.
The 5-point scale goes from Terrible to Excellent and gives you room to separate «fine» from «good». Use it when you plan to track an average over time.
- How was your visit today?
- How did you feel about this lesson?
- How was talking to our support team?
Settings, captions on a phone and the results
The only choice in the editor is three or five faces. By default the question reads «How was it?».
Each face has a caption under it. On a narrow phone screen the five-point version hides the captions in the middle and keeps only the labels at the two ends, so the row still fits on one line.
The answer is stored as a number. Results show the average out of the scale length, the distribution, and the average displayed as a face.
What you can set
- which set of emoji