Content Design @ Pinterest 📌
From 2019 til 2021, I worked as a content designer at Pinterest. My main areas of focus were activation, engagement, notifications and emerging tools for emerging markets, inclusion, and diversity.
Designing for Inclusivity: Hair Pattern Search
Hundreds of millions of people come to Pinterest for hair and beauty inspiration, but they don’t always see themselves in the search results. We saw an opportunity to redefine representation online for everyone. Why not use technology to empower users to more easily find hair inspiration across hair types?
My contributions to this project ran the gamut from crafting a content strategy and guidelines, naming the actual surface and the 6 search categories, in-app copy including UX and educational components. I collaborated with engineers, researchers, subject matter experts in the field of BIPOC hair, product designers, marketers, and lawyers.
Challenges
Hair is a very sensitive and personal subject, so word choice and naming became critically important to the success of the tool. There was also the issue of describing how the tool works without getting too technical. Because the hair pattern search uses computer vision and AI to identify patterns in imagery, it’s not always as accurate as a human might hope it would be. What a person considers type 3C curls, the computer could interpret as 2A or 4B depending on the patterns it perceives. And because of that, I was faced with lots of tradeoffs and compromises with regard to language, specificity, and definitions.
Looking at Latin America: A case study from the field in Brazil
What are we trying to learn?
As a member of the the Engagement Growth team, many of my goals in 2020 focused on increasing monthly average users in LATAM. The team chose Brazil as our initial focus due to the vast number of internet users in the country, as well as the breadth and diversity of the population. Writing plays a critical role in this effort — so this initiative was ideal for me to dig into the content strategy, adapt voice and tone, and put on my researcher hat.
What signal did we already have?
Users, especially new users, have a tenuous grasp on what Pinterest is for. This is especially clear in LATAM, where 11% of first searches done by new users in Brazil are pinterest, pinterest entrar, or www.pinterest.com. This is after signing up for an account, not before!
What’s THE hypothesis?
Brazilian Pinners and non-Pinners alike are accustomed and open to casual and informal brand messaging generally, and that attitude extends to their interactions with apps. So by shifting the tone we use when communicating with Pinners by region, we’ll increase users and form a bond/sense of trust with new and tenured Pinners alike.
How are we going to test and learn?
For our time on the ground in Brazil, we relied on a mixed approach to qualitative research.
~Our methodology~
In-home interviews with current Pinners in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo to understand current barriers and drivers for Pinning behavior
UX lab sessions with non-Pinners to explore the new user experience
Pinner Dinner with highly-engaged Brazilian Pinners
A LOOK AT WHAT We tested…
During in-field research, Pinners and non-Pinners saw stimuli with 3 variations in tone (playful, casual, and direct) across both educational messaging and notifications. Participants were also invited to share their opinions and preferences as it relates to other apps whose messaging stands out most to them.
What did we learn?
Comprehension issues abound…
Nearly all of the participants had at least heard of Pinterest. Most also thought Pinterest either creates content or heavily curates it. Even among daily users, many believed that we're more of a visual search engine in the style of Google images. Every single person we spoke to has used screenshots within the app to share content, some not even knowing that the opportunity to share or download ideas even exists. So there's definitely a lot of room for increased education and engagement here, plus maybe some new takes on how we can work with this pattern instead of against it.
Tone and voice matter a lot…
~notifications~
There was a lot of talk among participants about push notifications, specifically those from iFood (a Brazilian food delivery startup). The notifications are fun and timely, with a good chunk of them going viral (that's still a thing, right?). Fintech brand NuBank is big in Brazil now too, and also leans on a more informal tone to create a sense of trust and realness that many in the banking industry are unable to touch. I found it especially telling that 2 very different verticals (food delivery and finance) were among the top mentioned brands by those we spoke with. Pinterest naturally fits in between these brands, which means there's more room to play in this space—especially in LATAM!
~personalization + specificity~
We all know personalization goes a long way. But it was kinda cool to see this play out IRL when a participant showed us his email inbox. He had stacks of unopened messages, but had only opened in the past few weeks and it was from Pinterest (with a very specific subject line using his name and referencing a particular idea he'd been viewing).
On the same note, specificity came up in a lot of convos. People are open to more frequent communications from companies like us—but only if the message is extremely relevant to something in their lives right now (and not just something we think they'll like).
~the eternal question: how fun is too fun?~
When shown stimuli with 3 variations in tone (direct, casual, and playful), participants were pretty evenly split with some loving the more fun options and others opting for the more direct language. But given what we've seen with iFood and NuBank, there's more room for playful language when the time and channel are right.
Channels can make a big difference…
Everyone ignores email unless it's absolutely necessary to engage with (many called it "bureaucratic”). SMS is largely ignored, too. So that leaves push notifs and in-app comms as a primary way to really catch the user's attention. But one channel that is never ignored in this market is WhatsApp. So deeply ingrained in the lives of users that they would often forget to mention this as an app on their phone.
Users were generally neutral when asked about the possibility of receiving messages from Pinterest on WhatsApp, but stressed that the content would need to be hyper-relevant and not very frequent. I’m interested in exploring how we can toe the line in this channel, without overwhelming users in an app that is extremely personal.
Comprehension is key…
Comprehension continues to be an area we can improve upon, and we should explore how to optimize our copy in various communication channels. A playful tone is welcome here, and the user base is quite open to greater personalization and targeting. Brazil is home to lots of cutting edge startups, so it only makes sense that we have room to be a little more experimental in this market than users have come to expect.
I recommended the following…
Exploring playful language and an informal tone
Working toward variety in the language and structure of notifications
Clearly defining in-product terminology from the very beginning of a new user’s experience (e.g. board or collection? Pin or idea?) and staying consistent throughout the platform
Exploring how results in LATAM compare with audiences in other regions like Southeast Asia, as we continue to focus on newer region in the future
Launching the Today Tab
In early 2020, I led content strategy on the MVP launch of the Today tab. This was a net-new surface on Pinterest, featuring curated topics and trending Pins, making it easier for Pinners to explore timely ideas and discover new use cases.
Our timeline was greatly compressed by the rise of the COVID pandemic, moving our launch date forward dramatically to help folks quarantined at home find new ways to be inspired while staying safe. I collaborated with a broad team of cross-functional partners in marketing, legal, engineering and design, working through a broader content strategy, voice + tone, naming the surface itself (more complicated than you might expect!), and in-product UI copy. The launch was a success, with positive metric gains and praise from Pinners.
