Pinterest for iPhone: The Making-Of

Monday, May 9, 2011

Pinterest for iPhone: The Making-Of

We’ve been hard at work on Pinterest app for iPhone for a good few months now and we’re extremely excited to finally have it in the hands of our awesome users. Try it out here.

I (this guy) was responsible for most of the app that you get to play with starting today. So, if there’s anything you don’t like about it (or anything you do!), feel free to write on my wall.

I just wanted to talk a little about the app itself (and its uses!) as well as some of the product decisions that went into it.

A native mobile experience.

It’s very easy to take an existing web experience and quickly port it into a mobile one. But I don’t really believe in that method. After all, you already use your phone very differently from your computer. Usually in small short bursts, with one hand, on a much smaller screen.

I looked at the potential of what Pinterest would look like if it was designed for the phone from day one. And that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t want the mobile experience to feel like a companion app, but rather an independent experience (and maybe even the primary way you use Pinterest).

Pinning on the go.

I love being able to see people’s amazing tastes in the things they share from around the web. I’m really excited by the opportunity to see what people can discover and share with Pinterest on the go.I’ve used it to share amazing meals I’ve had, crazy looking buildings around my neighborhood, and famous landmarks around San Francisco, and I can’t wait to see what everyone else uses it for.Less tapping more pinning!The usage patterns of mobile apps are very different from those on the web. It is much more likely to fire up Pinterest while in line at the grocery store or while taking public transport to work. I built the app with that experience in mind.The app is extremely quick to load, and I put a lot of effort into making the app easy to use with just one hand. You can go from your feed, to a pin, to a user, to a board, to a pin, and beyond… with just one hand (while your other holds onto your groceries, for example).Less is more, and for the app that means that less tapping means more browsing and pinning. And who doesn’t like more browsing and pinning?!

Besides typing a comment or description, the entire app is very easily browsable using either hand. You can like and repin pins from the feed with a single tap, and you can browse your entire home feed with zero.

I spent a lot of time designing the filter selection interface. It’s extremely fast and you don’t need to tap each filter to try it out. Rather, you can swipe between all of the filters (even while they process) and tap once to choose the one you like best. It’s super slick.

Of course, those are just a limited selection of the probably hundreds of decisions I’ve made so far. Every single screen you’ll interact with using the app has been designed (even Apple’s native camera interface has been modified, integrating a library button to save a single tap).

The party’s just getting started.

You may not know this, but Pinterest.com has been iterated over 30 times. I think there’s a lot of value in iterating often, especially when your app is in the hands of real users using it in the real world. Just like the website, I intend to continue iterating on the app, designing, removing, re-designing, re-removing, adding, chopping, slicing, slowly getting closer and closer to this thing I like to aim for called perfection. So please, if you have any feedback, hit me up - good or bad!

Thanks for reading, and thanks for using Pinterest (on the web and on your phone)!

And if you haven’t downloaded it for whatever reason, get it here.