Pinterest Jul 10, 2015

Discover Pinterest Mobile Engineering and Design

Article Summary

Pinterest engineers rebuilt their mobile onboarding experience and saw engagement metrics jump across the board. With 80% of users on mobile, they had to get this right.

Pinterest's mobile team shared insights from a company event featuring their iOS and Android engineers, plus Google's Luke Wroblewski on mobile-first design. The talks covered everything from dynamic user education systems to Android app optimization for diverse devices.

Key Takeaways

Critical Insight

Pinterest's mobile team built a flexible, cross-platform onboarding system that significantly improved engagement for their mobile-first user base.

The video reveals specific techniques Pinterest used to handle the complexity of designing for multiple screen sizes and device types simultaneously.

About This Article

Problem

Pinterest had to build mobile experiences that worked on phones, tablets, and other devices with different screen sizes and capabilities. Users switched between devices throughout the day, and the designs needed to adapt.

Solution

Luke Wroblewski taught the team about RESS techniques and vertical media queries. These tools helped engineers and designers handle device differences and adjust UI designs so mobile experiences worked better.

Impact

Wendy Lu's iOS team rebuilt how new users learned about the app using a dynamic experience framework. It performed better than the previous version across all engagement metrics on the platform.