Pinterest is an app to share, discover, and save images, animated GIFs, and videos in the form of pinboards. Users are able to create pinboards, collaborate with other people in creating boards, and organise the contents inside the board.
As this is a personal project, I handled on being a UX and UI Designer.
Using Pinterest, we are used to pinning a bunch of stuff on a board. But when trying to organise and delete pins, how can we actually do it?
As a Pinterest user, I use Pinterest to search for ideas and mood boards. However, it tends to be frustrating when trying to sort out and delete some pins because there is no direct “Delete Pin” button.
To uncover how we can ease the experience for users, let’s go back to the current pin and unpinning process. There are 3 ways users can do to pin. In contrast to the pinning process, there are four flows for deleting pins:
Click image to enlarge
For the deleting pin process, the delete button is hidden inside the edit pin pop-up or the organise page. There are no direct delete pin button and the process are contrastingly different and complex, being compared with the pinning process, hence causes confusion to some users.
Figure 1: Pinterest Audience Overlap with Other Social Media Platforms, 2022.
Source: adapted from Hootsuite. 2022
According to the Pinterest user demographics by Hootsuite, the top 3 social media platforms that Pinterest users also use are Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. Those social platforms have some similar features to Pinterest, which are saving posts and saving videos. Hence, we can analyse the features and compare them with Pinterest’s pin and delete pinflow.
Click image to enlarge
Click image to enlarge
Click image to enlarge
These three platforms have similarities in having the same flows to save and unsave. Or, they have the delete button up front. However, Pinterest’s way to let users delete their pins is quite different from the way they pin and it's hidden behind a pop-up or page.
To learn more about users' behaviour in deleting pins, usability tests have been conducted. All participants were given a task to delete one pinned item from their board.
Android In-app User
Uses Pinterest for daily clothing styling
Spent 28 seconds to locate where the delete button is
Went from board to item page, and back to the board
Had difficulty locating the delete button, but successfully deleted the pin from the edit pin icon on the board page
Apple in-app user
Uses Pinterest for cute images
Spent 16 seconds trying to locate where the delete button is
Used the hold and drag action to the pin icon and tried to edit the board
Failed to complete the task
Apple web-app user
Uses Pinterest for graphic design ideas
Spent 18 seconds to locate where the delete button is
Hesitated to tap on the edit pin button
Deleted from the edit pin button on the item page
Avid Pinterest users might have known how to delete pins, however, occasional users might have difficulties finding how to delete pins.
In-app participants used the hold and drag action on the first try to locate the delete button, while a web-app participant used the ellipsis button to locate the delete button.
Some users expected an access to delete pin through the save button, however it can't be done through the save button.
To summarise again, here are some user flows of the current processes of pinning and unpinning.
After conducting the earlier research, some eased user flows were made as below. These flows have direct delete button that can be accessed up front rather than having to open several pop-ups or pages.
Currently, users can delete through hold and drag action by tapping on the edit icon. To reduce confusion, alternatively a delete button would be added.
Based on the user behavorial testing, it was found that users tapped on the save button to search for the delete pin button. Thus, an access to delete pin through the saved button would be added.
Currently, users can tap on the 'Edit Pin' option on the three-dot button menu. To reduce confusion, a 'Delete Pin' option would be added.
To visually guide users to discover the delete pin flow easily, ideating suitable icons has to be made, especially for the hold and drag action and delete pin through the save button.
The hold and drag action is used in both the board and item pages. With this action, explorations were done by modifying the icon buttons.
Same pathway to pin and unpin
There should be a way to save pins to other boards
Clear icon to delete
Lets users save pin to other boards
The save button on the item page is used to save pin. However, some users tapped on the saved button while trying to locate how to delete pin. This can be modified by adding indicators if the item has been pinned to each board, letting users pin on multiple boards and also delete pins on the same page.
Clear direction of what is pinned, what is unpinned, and how to unpin
Stroked icon doesn't fit in Pinterest's design guidelines
Visual icon difference between delete pin and pin actions
Might not be clear and accessible
Consistent icon representation; bin icon to delete, pin icon to pin
Clear info of 'Saved to' section
After comparing options and finalising decisions, specific icons were used in the flows. Hence, these are how the flows would look like on the interface.
Same participants were asked to test the new flows and comparing it to Pinterest's current design that they've tested before.
All participants prefered the new proposed flow rather than the current Pinterest flow. Most of them liked the hold and drag action, being compared to other flows in particular.
Before doing usability testing on Pinterest's current flow, I assumed everyone doesn't know about how to delete, yet through it I found out about how frequent users are used to it and non-frequent users are the one who has the difficulty. Even so, a platform should be inclusive and accessible to anyone; new , regular, or frequent users.
It was fun learning to recreate Pinterest's interaction and paying attention to many tiny details they have on their transitions. I have never created complex interactions on Figma before, however this was so worth to be learnt.
