Product Breakdown: 3 Learnings from the Pinterest App
Product Breakdown analyzes different products and lists noteworthy product and UX learnings. We believe that the best way to master good product practices is to learn from others.
Introduction
Pinterest is an app that let’s users collect and share interesting photos. The product is essentially a digital version of traditional pin-boards where users can “pin” and collect interesting photos they find. Here are some interesting product and UX takeaways from breaking down this app.
1. Using Search Page for Content Discovery
We’re starting to see apps such as Pinterest make smart use of the blank area below search fields. When a user goes to search, they’re presented with trending categories to explore below the search box. It’s a clever way to help the user discover interesting content.
Twitter’s mobile app does this as well — surfacing trending hashtags below the empty search box.
Not all apps do this though. Take a look at Spotify, which sticks to the traditional model of showing your search history in the blank space. It would be interesting to see them use this area to surface trending music instead. Search history can then be relegated to auto-complete options.
2. Tap and Hold to Reveal Shortcuts
Tapping and holding on an image in the Pinterest app surfaces shortcuts to Pin, Like, or Share the image.
This is a clever way to provide access to frequent actions, and it works here because:
a. They’re short-cuts. That is, these same actions can still be accessed in other ways (for example, if the user taps into a pin the same actions are available top level). Hence, it’s OK if the user doesn’t discover the tap-and-hold gesture immediately.
b. They’re consistent. Tap-and-hold on an image anywhere in the app, whether on a feed or when viewing an individual pin, and you’ll get the same 3 actions.
With Apple bringing 3D touch to the iPhone, we’ll likely see more apps follow this trend and put shortcuts behind special touches (albeit behind a forceful touch in the case of 3D touch).
3. Infinite Scrolling *Everywhere*
Infinite scrolling is not new — many apps including Facebook (with newsfeed) and Twitter (with timeline) all have had it for a while. Infinite scroll automatically surfaces more content when the user reaches the end of a page, increasing the chance that the user stays engaged.
What’s interesting about Pinterest is the extent to which they’ve added infinite scroll. Not only does the main feed have infinite scroll, but if you tap into an individual pin/image, you’ll find an infinite scrolling feed of “Related Pins” below that.
Other apps, including Twitter, could benefit from this. While the Twitter’s main timeline has infinite scroll, tapping into a single tweet is a dead-end.
Twitter could take a page from Pinterest’s book and consider adding related tweets below the tweet the user selected.
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