Building a more inspiring home feed experience to further the satisfaction of Pinterest users.
Team
Brian
Austin, TX
Ellie
San Francisco, CA
Clay
Austin, TX
Shannon
Berthoud, CO
Introduction
When first tasked with improving Pinterest, our fandom blinded our team from the flaws in the application. The mobile app allowed users to accomplish organizing ideas, images, and articles effectively.
However, as we conducted research we began to realize that the algorithm for the home feed was not always a satisfying experience. The troublesome part of this is that Pinterest is missing a great opportunity to generate revenue.
Inspired by our research, we set out to create a feature to further users' satisfaction with the ability to customize their home feed. In doing so, Pinterest will have more user data to target advertisements more effectively to yield more income.
Constraints
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A remote team across 3 timezones
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Short timeline
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Work within existing brand
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Mobile application
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Concept project
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No budget to utilize
Platform
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mobile application
Timeline
Tools
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Two weeks
Research Plan
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Heuristic evaluation
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Competitive Analysis (Houzz, Fancy, Instagram)
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Interview 5-8 users
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Affinity Map user insights (individually, then as a team)
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Create a journey map
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Conduct Comparative Analysis on feed customization (LinkedIn, Spotify, Facebook)
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Use research to create a user persona, problem statement, and a how might we statement
COMPETITIVE
COMPARATIVE
Synthesis
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Heuristic:
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Pinterest accomplishes the goal and need of the user
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Feature Comparison:
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no "like" feature
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Interviews & Affinity Map:
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Pinterest is the most private and personal of all the social media apps out there
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The biggest motivation to use the app is for being inspired and organizing idea
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"I" Statements from the affinity map:
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I get bored and frustrated looking at the pins on my main feed
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I don’t feel in control of what I see
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I feel inspired and relaxed looking through “related pins”
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I prefer using very specific terms when searching for pins
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Journey Map:
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The home feed can be uninspiring and repetitive
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Comparative:
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None of the apps have an intuitive and simple way to filter or customize their feed
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Facebook & LinkedIn have long and in-depth processes to adjust their feeds
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Ava Lamb
“I feel inspired and relaxed when I looking through related pins”
Ava arrives home after a long day designing for another boring beach wedding photoshoot. She’s ready to think about something else and just relax. She changes into comfortable clothes, pours herself a glass of pinot noir, and opens the Pinterest app. As she scrolls down her main feed she sees new ideas for vegan recipes, interior design, and tattoos but then she sees pins about beach weddings and she cringes. She’d been using Pinterest for work and now clearly it had infected her home feed. Ugh! She manages to remove one pin but there are lots of them. She closes Pinterest in frustration and looks for something else to do.
Champagne taste on a beer budget
Motivations
28 years old
Miami resident
Engaged
Photoshoot set designer
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Wants to have fantastic dinner parties.
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Enjoys collaboration with coworkers around set design.
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Wants to relax at the end of the day and fantasize about when she becomes successful.
Goals
"I avoid searching for things that I don’t want to see in the next two years”
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Plan her wedding and live her lifestyle without breaking the bank.
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Be inspired and relax
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Create great photo sets
Pain Points
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Ava is confused by the pins that she sees in her main feed.
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She does not feel in control of her experience
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She doesn't feel inspired by her main feed
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She must be very specific with her searches to find what she wants
Ava's Journey Map
Problem Statement
Ava needs a better way to curate her main feed because she is uninspired and frustrated when she sees pins that are irrelevant to her.
How Might We...
implement a new way for Ava to curate her home feed that is intuitive, engaging, and fun?
WIREFRAMES & PROTOTYPE
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34 proposed elements to address the problem
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Created a circle feature to weight the algorithm of the different categories that populate the home feed
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Circles were intended to engage users through gamification while curating their feed
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First, the edit page includes the four categories that influence the home feed currently (Boards, History, Topics, Following)
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The second edit page is for highly specialized filtering within each of those 4 categorize
Test Plan
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Goal: user is able to curate their feed by removing work-related pin suggestions within 2 minutes
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Moderated remote testing over Zoom with InVision Prototype
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20-40 yo, young professionals, users of Pinterest on a minimum of a monthly basis
TEST SCRIPT
- Explain the greyscale prototype and limited hotspots
- Ask to explain thoughts and expectations along the way
- Scenario: the entire persona scenario from Ava
- Task: remove work-related images from their home feed (note: this requires turning off history and 2 specific boards)
Synthesis
🧐 🤔 😓
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Tested 4 users
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Took an average of 14.5 minutes to complete the task
75% of users:
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needed the task clarified during the test
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were confused by the edit feed page
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understood toggling boards on/off
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did not think their history would populate their feed
Iteration
Time to simplify! The fact of the matter was the design was too complicated. We removed six of the fourteen screens from the user flow. See below.
Simplify
Prototype Version 2
Test Plan Iterations
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Changed to only testing to turn-off boards
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History already turned off for simplification
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Scenario: you use Pinterest for work and personal, you only want to see personal suggestions right now.
🤗
😎
Synthesis
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Tested 3 users
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The tooltip on the home page was helpful
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All users felt confident using the toggles
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None of the users understood how the home feed was populated
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2/3 were still confused by circle page
🤔
Next Steps
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Education about the algorithm with an onboarding process for both existing and new users
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Conduct A/B Testing:
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Create a more interactive prototype that user can resize circle with pinching
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Create a filter option with only toggles and checkboxes
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REFLECTION
I LEARNED...
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To trust my instincts
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To remember to design simple functions before fancy design
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When working in design teams, each member might have a different concept of the specific details of the design
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The team dynamic conversation is important to have early and will likely take longer than one might expect
LOVED IT...
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Having four team members to bounce ideas off of to create an amazing product
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Learning from the strengths of others on my team
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Supporting the learning growth of my teammates
INTERESTING...
It was great to see all of the savvy hacks that users come up with to solve their own UX problems.
THAT WAS HARD...
As a team, narrowing our design solutions from 34 possible features to only one.
"Shannon was our scheduling queen, she made sure we got a timeline down so we had expectations on when things were going to be done. I helped Shannon conduct interviews and she was giving me useful feedback and I was able to give her feedback on a few things as well throughout the project. She has a completely different personality than I do but I need someone like her on my team to feel secure and like we're going to end strong and on time. It makes me feel safe."
~Clay
"Shannon was an excellent team member to work with! Her instincts as a facilitator were invaluable, and she has an intellectual curiosity that makes her a natural at research. She’s also lightning-fast, which comes in very handy when you only have two weeks to complete a project as a group. I would gladly work with her again!"
~Ellie
"I loved working with Shannon on this project. She’s an organized and fully committed teammate who is great at facilitating team meetings."
~Brian