MindNation: Complex Emojis

MindNation, one of Asia's pioneer mental healthcare systems, together with Propel Manila, created the first-ever Complex Emojis to help people make sense of the complicated emotions brought about by these complicated times. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Philippines in March, the Philippines have spent ten months in isolation and counting, experiencing the world’s longest lockdown. This prolonged isolation has given rise to new, overwhelming, and complicated emotions that are hard to understand, yet alone verbalize. Based on the most common combinations of emotions experienced in the pandemic, the Complex Emojis were created by redesigning the familiar emojis to show a mix of different emotions instead of just one. It was a clever and lighthearted way of showing people it’s okay to feel a lot of things all at once. Especially now in these difficult and unprecedented times. Launched as social posts and as GIF stickers to connect to people with the same complex emotions, the Complex Emojis led to a 24/7 mental health chatbot designed to help people talk about what they’re going through. But more importantly, the chatbot could recognize keywords when human intervention was needed, and connected people to free psychologist consultations.