Pinterest Workshop

UX/UI Design
Tools: Figma, Photoshop, Invision, Canva and Google Slides

Project Overview

Pinterest is a visual discovery engine for finding ideas like recipes, home and style inspiration, and more. When you discover Pins you love, save them to boards to keep your ideas organized and easy to find. You can also create Pins to share your ideas with other people on Pinterest.

Exploring the Problem

Pinterest is an image sharing and social media service designed to enable saving and discovery of information on the internet using images, and on a smaller scale, animated GIFS and videos, in the form of pinboards.
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They are now looking to expand on their image and video tutorials by adding a workshop/online class feature where users can access and purchase video courses they can create or take themselves based on their inspirations. They already have short video tutorials as well as the ability to purchase products online.

This feature would add an extended workshop area where users can purchase classes as well as teach and create their own course material based on the pins and boards they save or create.

Research

Competitive Analysis

I began my research with a competitive analysis outlining four companies that offer very similar tutorials and videos.

The closest competitor to Pinterest for this added feature is Udemy. They offer all kinds of content from mundane projects to very skilled and detailed classes. There are many online course websites but they focus on educational and university focused learning.

Instructables is a great site for step-by-step tutorials and they offer a wide variety just like Udemy but they do not offer online courses.

Masterclass is a great site to get high quality expert information from the best. However the learning is more lecture based than a step-by-step tutorial or online class.

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User Interviews

I conducted three semi-structured user interviews to get a better sense of how I should build this feature so that the avid Pinterest user, such as my target user Stephanie will decide to expand her knowledge by purchasing an online class or tutorial.

After completing all my interviews I found that many people use Pinterest in different ways.

Pinterest can be for everyone but it is largely based on the kind of interests people have as to what they look for and use. Each of my participants had specific interests in what they would look at and save on their pin boards.
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The target user for this added feature is anyone that wants to fulfill a need to further their skill, talent or education in anything that inspires them on the Pinterest platform.

User Flow: New Feature

In order to create a process where my target user Stephanie wants to learn more about ceramics. The user flow needed to go further than what Pinterest already has established of watching simple tutorials. So I created a user flow based on the common tasks of selecting a class, purchasing that class, and then proceeding to take and complete a ceramics course.

With the user flow in mind I created rough sketches that show the transition from a current Pinterest pin board screen to a detailed workshop screen. This area of the site would be more robust like the online class platforms available on Udemy.com.

Design Process

Wireframes

Design Iterations

In adding the Workshop area it needed to feel seamless with the other features on the Pinterest site. So I sketched it out to be very similar to the Shop area but once the purchase was made then the class page would function like a normal online course within the Pinterest site.

Workshop Page

Usability Testing

Prototype

After building the prototype I conducted usability testing on 3 everyday users of Pinterest. Each user went through the task flow pretty easily. The only challenges that were encountered throughout the test was determining the difference between purchased classes and those that were available to purchase. Because of this I added a My Classes navigation link so that users can access their purchased classes from any page in the workshop area.

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Analysis & Insights

Mini Site User Flow

Takeaways

This additional feature turned out to be a really good extension to what Pinterest already offers. I found through my research that Pinterest has a wider base of users than just your creative DIYers'. As an avid user of the site myself I really enjoyed working on this project and I think this feature benefits Pinterest users in a new and positive way. I feel this feature will bring new types of users to the site that have different inspirations and skills they would like to improve on.

After all revisions have been made the following mini-site user flow displays the process Stephanie takes to purchase a class.

Once my usability testing was completed I was able to understand the patterns that were created and I made the appropriate changes to my prototype based on the challenges that were experienced by my participants.

The main challenges that needed to be corrected were adding a library link to all purchased classes, make sure that each class has an informational page so that users can get more detail, make sure purchased classes are marked in some way to show that they have been purchased, clearly delineate where to click on the Add To Cart Button.