Usability emoji is condescending

The proposed gitmoji for “user experience/usability” is :children_crossing: 🚸 . That, very literally, infantilises users.

:busts_in_sillhouete: 👥 is often used elsewhere to denote “users”, but is already taken in gitmoji to denote “other developers”. Which illustrates the problem.

Some possible alternatives that treat human beings with respect could be:

• :people_holding_hands: 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 : Same principle of hand-holding but from an equal standpoint.
• :relieved: 😌 : The abstract character is not ideal, since the idea of “relief” suggests more a bugfix. But in everyday use this glyph often signals relaxation and well-being, and I think it would convey the idea of “good usability” well. More generic smiles like “smiling face with smiling eyes” 😊 could also work.
• person getting massage 💆 : This would frame the contributor as a professional service provider rather than a parent who knows better.

I’m sure there are many more that would fit this.

[lukethehuman]

Thanks for bringing this up @melissaboiko, I agree. I’ve recently been introduced to gitmoji at work and think they’re a great way to quickly show what your commits are about, but I’ll admit :children_crossing: 🚸 did come off as an odd pick for UE improvements. At a glace I’d have assumed it referred to either accessibility or safety/caution (i.e. the road sign).

Of the suggestions I quite like :massage: 💆 as it makes me think “bad user-experience is headache-inducing, therefore good user-experience is the opposite: i.e. a head massage”.

I would also throw into the mix something like :computer_mouse: 🖱️ as I feel the computer mouse has become a symbol representing user agency and so relates in a general sense to all users. However, it might be an odd choice for command-line tools. :computer: 💻 might better include command-line tools by showing the monitor as the window to UE, but I imagine it’s too general of an image to be useful (it could represent the commit as “something related to computers” which isn’t so helpful 😄).

In reply to the discussion above, note that we already have :wheelchair: ♿️ for “improving accessibility”. I think this would likely be an appropriate choice for any commits literally relating to making the software more usable for children (accessibility is not just about disability, after all). I’d even argue making the code more user-friendly to adult non-experts would come under the banner of accessibility. Although the broader we define accessibility, the less accurate the :wheelchair: emoji as a symbol of disability becomes so there’s issues with leaning too far in this direction.

Just my 2p. Hope this helps! 👍👁️👄👁️👍

[vhoyer]

Well, first of all, thank you, @melissaboiko, for the issue raised and I think it’s great that you care about this project and the well being of everyone. but… I’m not gonna lie, with all due respect (and risking sounding a bit contradicting because of my stance on the issue about “dev tooling/DX” and the :man_technologist:), I kinda like treating users as children because I think that helps me keep in mind that we should strive to help the users with good labeling, good experiences, good feedback, and always try to make the product as simple as possible (as if a child could use).

Of course this is just my opinion, and I don’t like the idea of making people feel bad because of a silly opinion of mine like this one.

I’d like see if more people show interest in this change, because if people are bothered by this, then maybe it will be worth to make this breaking change. My point being, maybe we let this issue here to see if more people give feedback on this.

That said, I also like better the :people_holding_hands: alternative if we decide on carrying on with this change, but we could look more into it when the time comes to implementing it.

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On a side note: I think that we need to be more careful with this kind of stuff when adding new emojis in the future; although the :children_crossing: is quite an old emoji in the gitmoji “spec”.