Pinterest Notifications Redesign

Notifications is a core retention driver that brings back 58 million users to Pinterest every week, or 22% of Pinterest's total weekly active users. The team has always been a very engineering-heavy, metrics driven team; this growth-heavy culture eventually culminated in a disjointed, poor user experience.

I set a vision for the team that led to 2 major projects, in which I set principles and holistically redesigned the notifications product to improve the overall user experience, establish the role of notifications within the entire Pinterest product, and improve business metrics.


Platforms: iOS, Android, mobile web and desktop web
Team: 1 PM, 1 UX researcher, 1 content designer, 4 engineers

Duration: 2 years (from setting a vision to shipping all projects)

Notifications is a core retention driver that brings back 58 million users to Pinterest every week, or 22% of Pinterest's total weekly active users. The team has always been a very engineering-heavy, metrics driven team; this growth-heavy culture eventually culminated in a disjointed, poor user experience.

I set a vision for the team that led to 2 major projects, in which I set principles and holistically redesigned the notifications product to improve the overall user experience, establish the role of notifications within the entire Pinterest product, and improve business metrics.


Platforms: iOS, Android, mobile web and desktop web
Team: 1 PM, 1 UX researcher, 1 content designer, 4 engineers

Duration: 2 years (from setting a vision to shipping all projects)

Notifications is a core retention driver that brings back 58 million users to Pinterest every week, or 22% of Pinterest's total weekly active users. The team has always been a very engineering-heavy, metrics driven team; this growth-heavy culture eventually culminated in a disjointed, poor user experience.

I set a vision for the team that led to 2 major projects, in which I set principles and holistically redesigned the notifications product to improve the overall user experience, establish the role of notifications within the entire Pinterest product, and improve business metrics.


Platforms: iOS, Android, mobile web and desktop web
Team: 1 PM, 1 UX researcher, 1 content designer, 4 engineers

Duration: 2 years (from setting a vision to shipping all projects)

Project 1: News Hub redesign

Through this project, I accomplished the following:

  1. Redesigned the UI of Pinterest's notification center to be more intuitive to navigate, and establish it as a retrieval surface instead of a content discovery surface that felt duplicative and competed with core monetizable surfaces like Home and Search

  2. Provided users more controls to adjust the notifications they receive so that they can create an experience they find valuable

  3. Rerouted 7 notification types to land users on core monetizable surfaces where they can continue discovering content on Pinterest, instead of siloing users into a dead end page within News Hub

Previous News Hub to redesigned News Hub

New controls for each notification

Previous IA for notification landing to new IA

These designs were tested and shipped with the following results:

  1. The redesigned UI led to increases in engagement metrics on Home, and decreases in News Hub metrics which were expected. Topline metrics remained flat, which was our goal.

    • +0.34% ad revenue created, +0.82% ad clicks, +0.54% ad impressions

  2. Adding controls for News Hub items led to a 48% increase in users adjusting individual notification settings, which is a UX improvement because we are making these controls more accessible

  3. The rerouted notification types led to an increase in engagement metrics on core surfaces:

    • Home feed: +1% pin impressions, +1% close-ups, +1% clicks, , +0.25% ad clicks, +0.34% ad impressions

    • Board "more ideas" page: +11% sessions, +6% impressions, +5% repins

Project 2: Settings redesign

The goal for this project was to redesign the notifications settings to be more intuitive and easy to navigate, in the hopes of encouraging users to fine tune their notifications content rather than turning off notifications entirely. Key updates included:

  1. Moving from a 2 page, channel-first approach to a 1 page, type-first approach, which allows users to navigate the notification settings more easily and thoughtfully

  2. Providing examples or education around what each notification means

[Mobile] Previous settings to redesigned settings

[Desktop] Previous settings to redesigned settings

These designs were experimented and shipped with the following results:

  • Increase in users adjusting their settings more, and a generally improved ratio of subscribes to unsubscribes

  • Improved email metrics (email is the channel most likely to be globally unsubbed from): +5.9% email opens, +4.9% email clicks

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