Expand emojis to reflect the diversity of ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability of your user base
Emoji set is limited and almost exclusively white and male. This doesn't reflect the make up of most modern workplaces and certainly doesn't reflect the make up of your global user base.
Jonathan Chapman, Clifford Chance LLP
shared this idea
Thank you for your feedback! The team is currently working on a significant update to add a broader and more diverse selection of emojis to Teams. We will share an update as soon as one is available.
116 comments
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Jane
commented
I only see black male icons on my windows 10 settings?? what is going on? I'm a white female living in the UK and would like to reflect that in my windows. Why do you even bother with these types of icons?? It is just annoying people.
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Bill
commented
Good to hear. Make it happen! :-)
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Yvonne O'Donovan
commented
This will lead to issues, wrong skin tone chosen/used - leave yellow pacman type as the universal skin tone. None of us are garish yellow - none of us can be any more offended than the other. We have work to do lets just get on with it. A better range of expressions would be welcome however.
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Anonymous
commented
I only see yellow
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Dev
commented
They are yellow though everyone. I'm white, not yellow, but I guess I get that it's light coloured... but it's definitely not a white thumb or hand raise that we're looking at.
I agree with diversity and the ability to customise your own view but will it get confusing to show a post with a variety of differently coloured thumbs up? Like, 3 generic yellow people, one black person and one white person liked your post, all with separate space taken up in the post? Or are you only changing your own view of the emojis and not then seeing the diversity anyway? Seems complicated, that's all.
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Khashina
commented
add skin tones for the emojis...inclusion is amazing!~
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Christian
commented
Do you have an internal shortcut so in the meanwhile we can just do it via text? In Slack, you can see whether any emoji is personalizable by appending ":skin-tone-5" to the shortcut. Here's a quick chart:
Product | Shortcut | Personalization
Slack. | :thumbs-up:| :thumbs-up::skin-tone-5:
Teams. | (yes) | MANY OPTIONS HERE (yes::skin-tone-5) , (yes)(5) , (yes::brown), (yes-I-have-melanin) -
Kyle W.
commented
This may have been said already, but it's also important not to default to a white person's hand for the standard "hand raise" feature. Having a more diverse emoji set to switch to is great, but it's still racist to make the default option white. White people will be fine if they have to fish around for a different color emoji for a while.
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Karina S.
commented
Given the remote environment during this time, representation of inclusive emoji's is more important than ever.
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Doug Kalish
commented
Add emojis to Microsoft Teams chats that offer gender and skin-tone variants so that they are more inclusive and more empowering. This functionality has already been developed and launched for Yammer…we want this for MS Teams as well. This would promote diversity in the workplace as well as in users’ personal lives.
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louise
commented
this should not be something we should need to vote for in 2021 - Please update Microsoft !
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Michele Broadbent
commented
Hello, it's 2021, time to move with the times guys and have emoji's that better represent the people using them! Would also be nice to see an actual response from Microsoft Teams to any of the requests for the same on here!!!!
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Taylor
commented
This is so important and should be moved to the top of the list for Teams to accomplish.
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Anonymous
commented
Please make it possible to change skin tone in emojis, especially in the quick reply emojis in the Teams text thread.
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Mike
commented
Please add more diverse skin tones on the emojis. Students use Microsoft Teams every day. Everything else has diverse skin tone except this. I just started using it today and it was the first thing I noticed.
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Jessica Taylor
commented
I agree! As a white person I think that this is racist and will not continue to participate in the quiet aggression that underlies this level of ignorance!
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Adrienne
commented
It is also an option available as a standard feature in Apple apps, on many emoji keyboards and in Zoom. It would make Teams more culturally competent.
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Colina Wright
commented
As a BAME member of staff I tend not to use the "thumbs up" and other emojis in Teams regardless of whether I agree; I know it's simply an icon but if I can customise my emojis on my phone to reflect who I am, I'd like this to be the case when communicating across my organisation and beyond. It means something to me being in the minority at my Students' Union, why should I not be myself... it's sometimes the little things that matter. If "black lives matter" then perhaps this is a simple gesture you can amend to reflect that they matter to you too.
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Anonymous
commented
This is really important - the default skin tone for me is 'white' and I don't know how to change that default. It reinforces a negative stereotype that other skin tone are variants rather than the norm. Please allow the option to set a default skin tone, or at least make the default grey or a non-realistic colour.
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Tracey Grose
commented
Be culturally responsive and add skin tones to the emojis in teams.