Washing Pinterest’s Windows
My Pinterest profile reads, “Just a little girl addicted to pinning.”
This was true when I was an eighth grader and is still true now, more than five years later. In that time, Pinterest has grown from a hub of do-it-yourself projects and mason jar decorations to a full-on adjective. When asked for a redesign of a product feature for the Kleiner Perkins Design Fellow project, I was immediately drawn to it. When I think of Pinterest, I fondly remember finding halloween costumes in high school, flowers for prom, and decoration ideas for my college apartment. But I saw a major opportunity for adjustment.
Introduction
On my phone, Pinterest lies right next to Facebook and Instagram in my social media folder, but this placement has always felt wrong. The current mobile interface includes a following feed, a notifications tab, and a direct messaging feature, much like Instagram. But I have never met someone and wanted to swap Pinterest handles, and most of the time, I don’t interact with anyone while I pin . . .
My big question to Pinterest users became, “Do you use Pinterest to socialize?”
Turns out, the average user doesn’t. The social functions of Pinterest largely go unused or unnoticed. They’ve become clutter on an interface that could greatly benefit from being as clean and streamlined as possible. In describing why she enjoyed using Pinterest for inspiration, Jennet Liaw, one of my favorite designers, said,
“Pinterest is a rarity in the social visual sharing community. It doesn’t have an emphasis on follower count or how your gallery looks or how it represents you as a person. It’s about saving ideas. There’s a lot of really rich, good ideas here.”
She captured what Pinterest really is to users: a resource overflowing with ideas.
I saw an opportunity to simplify the home page of Pinterest’s mobile app to reflect this purpose and hone in on the seamless viewing and discovering of pins. My process was guided by user research and my own experience and hopes for the future of the app. I believe the app is a window by which we get to see the soul of Pinterest: incredible ideas. This window just needs some Windex.
*I want to note that I did not study their interaction with every feature of every part of the app, only the ones that can be directly accessed from the home page, denoted by the Pinterest logo in the dock.
I approached the problem in two phases:
- Evaluation
- Tidying
1. Evaluation
In order to properly and purposefully tidy up the features, I first attempted to understand Pinterest users through casual conversations about their app habits: Why, how, and how often were they using it?
I found two main user profiles.
Ellie is an explorer. Explorers scroll through Pinterest daily in their spare time and don’t come to the app with a goal in mind. They have several boards that cover a plethora of interests and explore all that Pinterest has to offer. Pinterest serves as a source of entertainment.
Taylor is a seeker. Seekers come to Pinterest as a tool and resource. They know what they are trying to find on the site and only turn to it when they need specific ideas. They use the app more like a search engine than a discovery platform.
Ellie and Taylor seem distinct, yet they are surprisingly more similar than different. When they come to Pinterest, they just want to see good ideas. Both users agree with Jennet; they don’t use Pinterest for others. It is a personal collection of ideas used freely and messily. Explorers explore for themselves. Seekers seek for themselves.
After broadly observing user relationships with the app, I specifically asked about their interaction with key features seen on the home page: Search, Discover, Following Feed, Notifications, My Boards, and Messages.
Amongst many comments and notes about the interface, one thing became evident: Search reigns supreme. Explorers and seekers both rely heavily on the search bar, and it is often the first point of contact after opening the app. It can be used multiple times in one sitting and is a crucial part of Pinterest’s purpose. My Boards and Discover are both secondary to search. They allow Pinterest to be a point of reference and a point of discovery, respectively, but they are not used by every user, every time. Following Feed, Notifications, and Messages are either barely touched, seen as annoying, or not seen at all. With sticky notes on my wall showing clear pleasure and pain points, I moved on to tidying.
2. Tidying
Search, Discover, and My Boards clearly had to stay; they are the backbones of Pinterest.
Search
Pinterest’s search bar as-is is quite brilliant already. The addition of the Lens, Ideas for You, and Trending on Pinterest, all lead to better searching and better browsing. I only chose to enlarge it slightly to make it easier to access and so the Lens was more emphasized and touch-friendly.
Discovery
The discovery feed, the landing page of the app, may not always be scrolled through thoroughly, but it is always glanced at. It can be the starting point of journeys into the depths of Pinterest and is already quite pleasant on a mobile screen. One shortcoming, though, is the inconsistent titles of pins. Some pins include titles underneath and some don’t. Those that do have them are often poorly titled with inaccurate or extremely long names. When users are scrolling, they are focused on the content itself and don’t require a title to clarify every pin. Further details can be found when the pin is actually opened or at the pin’s source. The titles disrupt the ease of viewing and don’t add any clear value on the screen. The three little dots at the lower right corner of every pin, on the other hand, greatly promote scrolling and discovery with little disruption. They allow a user to pin, send, or hide a pin in seconds, without ever opening it. For the discovery feed, I took away the titles below the pins to streamline the gallery-view experience, but only moved the dots as their functionality greatly outweighed their minute appearance.
My Boards
Access to a user’s own boards and pins is clearly a necessity and its appearance on the home dock made sense. The location provided quick and convenient access; I kept it where it was.
With Following feed, Notifications, and Messages, tidying had to be done.
Following Feed
The following feed shows the activity and pins of users you follow, but users expressed confusion about why it had to be separate from their main discovery feed. They never chose to view only the following feed and don’t particularly care about the pins and activity of other users. I removed this feed from the dock completely.
Notifications
The notifications suffered similar criticism. Users only open the notifications tab to clear their notifications and do not care to be notified every time a pin is re-pinned. Notifications can include re-pinnings, comments, friend activity, and idea suggestions, which can all be fun, but are never looked at. Once again, Pinterest is a personal platform. Users aren’t concerned with others. Pinterest’s customized idea suggestions have led me to great ideas, but it is integrated enough into the search bar and into the discovery feed that further notifications about it seemed repetitive. Therefore, I also removed notifications from the home dock.
Messages
The messaging feature was interesting to think about. Most users saw the benefit of it; they just never used it. They either sent pins directly through text using the ‘Share’ button or screen-shotted pins to text later on. The direct messaging feature is extremely easy to use and would seemingly be the solution to the extra steps of sharing a pin. But, again, because Pinterest does not emphasize friends or followers, it’s unlikely that users could access everyone they wanted to share a pin with. Texting is the fool-proof way of sending a pin, to Pinterest and non-Pinterest users alike. Because this redesign is centered on the ideas and not the social network of Pinterest, it felt bizarre to try to encourage messaging on the app. The use of the messages is undeniably tied to having friends within the app, and because that is not the focus of Pinterest or this project, I reluctantly removed messages from the home page. In further studies, I would love to explore where and how messaging could live within the app.
Final Changes
With all of this and Marie Kondo in mind, I made the following changes:
- The search bar is extended to fit the width of the screen and is ever so slightly larger for ease of access to the Lens option. Some people have larger fingers.
- The feed of pins, on Discover and elsewhere, no longer includes titles to create a more seamless scrolling experience.
- The three magic dots moved onto the pin itself to give more breathing room between pins.
- Following Feed and Notifications were removed from the dock due to lack of use and purpose within the app.
- Messages was removed from the top right corner. The feature has high potential but low use and is dodged by most users.
So what?
As a fan of Pinterest, I cannot say with certainty that any of the changes I made would be the “correct” choice or even along the right path. But as a fan of Pinterest, I also know that everything I chose to remove would not be missed by me. In questioning several Pinterest users, they strongly hinted at this notion that I started with: Ideas. Ideas. Ideas. I see the thought behind the socialization of the app but it seems like the spoiling of a beautiful thing. Pinterest is this grand rabbit hole that users get to fall down, and I want them to fall effortlessly, without hitting unnecessary obstacles along the way. They get to the ideas regardless, but I hope these adjustments can help them get there without any bumps or bruises.
