Pinterest home feed widget
Designed a new widget for users to see their home feed Pins and an accompanying educational upsell.
Platform: iOS
Team: 1 PM, 1 content designer, 4 engineers
Timeline: January - April 2023
Context
Back in October 2020, there was a huge trend of making your iPhone home screen look aesthetic. A tiger team came together and launched a board widget and an interest widget. These widgets were very successful but only benefited more experienced Pinterest users.
The Notifications team decided to take ownership of widgets and create a new widget that would serve a broader audience and drive retention and engagement back to the app.
"Inspiration at a glance"
Widgets are a lightweight yet powerful source for visual inspiration, and a gateway back into Pinterest.
Pinterest widgets should feel human, caring, and look aesthetic. We want our users to feel taken care of, and keep them coming back and feeling inspired.
Pinterest widgets should also be highly relevant to a user and intent-focused, keeping them engaged with the content.
Opportunity
I worked with my PM to determine the direction of our new widget. We took a look at all the possible types that existed and how they could translate into Pinterest specific features. Then we looked at the opportunity audiences and sizing, as well as the effort and impact. We decided to target the "lean back" widget ideas, as shown in green:
Widget designs
I explored a couple widget concepts from our chosen opportunity space. Eventually we landed on a simple gallery widget that came in 3 sizes and cycled through Pins from a user's home feed.
Upsell designs
Since installing widgets is not very intuitive, I designed and animated an upsell that would appear on app launch and teach users how to add a widget to their home screen.
Impact
The new widget was launched in April 2023; by February 2024 there were 2.33 million active widgets.
The upsell was launched in March 2024, and led to a 7.4% monthly increase in widgets as well as 75k weekly active user increase.