Redesign: Pinterest
UX design
For this project, we wanted to explore how inspiration seeking and the storage of inspirational material can be optimised, in order for people to have a better foundation for exploring and living out their creative ideas.
Projekt scope
- UX design
- Academic research
The goal
The goal was to redesign Pinterest in a way that would make it a better creativity support tool. We identify two groups of users that could both benefit from Pinterest’s potential as a creativity support tool. We wanted to optimize how these groups could use Pinterest in a way that would allow them to bettering their inspiration gathering process, by optimizing the organisation of the saved material as well as prompting inspiration for the users.
Reminders is an implementation that would give users the ability to swipe through a story with pins they’ve previously pinned, similar to for example monthly highlights on Snapchat or “this day last year” reminders on Google Photos. We placed this feature on the frontpage of a given board as the user is already on that page to get inspired by the pins pushed by the corresponding algorithm of the board. With this reminder feature, users will be able to easily get to view pins they’ve pinned in the past on said board without the need to scroll to the bottom of the board, but at the same time the pins also get reusability value. When reintroduced to these pins the user gets to become re-inspired by them, which might push users to get some use out of previously pinned pins instead of going off to find new inspiration, which would in turn promote the reusability of pins found in the users’ boards.
Matching the mental model
Another thing little-c users mentioned was that their mental model of the platform didn’t quite match the conceptual model. To begin fixing the issues pointed out by the users it was important to look at what platforms they use besides Pinterest to which they told us they use Instagram. Therefore, the link on the page for an individual pin has been moved underneath the username, so that the username is now at the very top just like it is on Instagram
Dark mode and board selections
Additional changes was changing the frontpage, so that it always displays board sections at the top, which after clicking on one, changes the algorithm on the frontpage to represent the chosen board section. The feedtuner that previously only existed in the settings, was also implemented across devices to the startfeed, as it was a feature that would help users get a much better understanding of what is shown on their own startfeed. We also added dark mode to give the user the option to change the interface to their preferences.
Disclaimer: after the completion of our project, Pinterest has been updated and at the time of writing this now includes similar features to some of the changes that we made. These changes have been made separately from each other and we did not have any knowledge that Pinterest would make the same changes when we were working on the project.