
Why Pinterest-style layouts are worthless to everyone except Pinterest - corwinstephen
http://stephencorwin.com/blog/?p=97
======
chewxy
I have written about this before[0][1]. It has to do with the perceived
browsing habits of one's users.

Let's posit that there are two ways of information search/seeking: the
directed searcher, and the explorer. The direct searcher knows what he/she
wants, either a narrow search or in broad swatches. Then there is another
behaviour which is the explorer. When users are in this mode, their minds
explore what is possible and their eyes roam to what attracts them.

Understanding these two behaviours, interaction design becomes quite a simple
problem to solve. In the former, the interaction design is to get the
user/reader to the target object as fast as possible. In the latter behaviour,
the interaction design is to get users to stick around your system for as long
as possible.

The best interaction design I have seen and experienced for the former
behaviour is Google. The whole design of Google is to get people off their
page as soon as possible.

Ironically, the best interaction design I have seen for the latter behaviour
has the most minimal of UI design. I'm talking of course, about StumbleUpon.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to monetize SU's interaction design (SU
ultimately found a method to monetize its assets which I found rather
interesting). The Pinterest UI is merely a logical conclusion of designing
interaction for lingering souls and wandering minds.

Imagine how easy it would be to have a 300x250 image ad in one of the boxes.
Of course, the surprising thing is that Pinterest does not actively use
display advertising to monetize.

[0] [http://theforkingchef.com/post/41947940039/search-
behaviour-...](http://theforkingchef.com/post/41947940039/search-behaviour-
types)

[1] [http://theforkingchef.com/post/42355830855/the-subscriber-
an...](http://theforkingchef.com/post/42355830855/the-subscriber-and-the-
seeker)

~~~
jibbirish
I am currently doing my bachelor thesis, and a part of my theoretical
framework addresses these two kinds of shoppers. There is actually quite some
academic research on the subject.

According to Swanson (1992) gratification can be categorized in two
dimensions: process and content. Process gratification refers to the enjoyment
and satisfaction from engaging in communication, content gratification refers
to learning information from media content. In other words, motivations such
as entertainment, relaxation, escape or just passing time are related to
process gratifications (Parker and Plank, 2000). On the other hand
information, cognitive and search motives are linked to content gratifications
(Stafford and Stafford, 2001; Charney and Greenberg, 2002).

Other studies related to consumer behavior have identified two types of
behavior as well. Much like content gratification, utilitarian motives are
related to problem solving, goal oriented, task related and rational (Batra
and Ahtola, 1991; Wolfinbarger and Gilly, 2001). Contrasting hedonic motives
can be compared to process gratification. Hedonic motives are often driven by
such things as fun, amusement, enjoyment, arousal, novelty and surprise
(Hirschman, 1980; Babin et al. 1994; Hausman, 2000).

Simply put, utilitarian shoppers are those with a purchasing goal, while
hedonic shoppers fulfill their needs not simply through the purchase, but in
the shopping experience itself (Arnold and Reynolds, 2003). Hedonic shoppers
are shopping for shopping sake.

Digging into research on the effect of web aesthetics on buying decisions of
consumers, a case can be made for two aspects of aesthetics: aesthetic appeal
and aesthetic formality. Aesthetic appeal refers to the attractiveness and
creativity of design, while aesthetic formality covers the way information is
presented, the clearness and legibility of a website (Schenkman and Jonsson,
2000; Lavie and Tractinsky, 2004).

Now combining these two types of consumers and two aspects of aesthetics, we
can argue that the utilitarian shopper is highly motivated by aesthetic
formality. He will be more likely to make a purchase when he is not distracted
by novel design, and is able to find all the information he needs easily.
Hedonic shoppers o the other hand are motivated by aesthetic appeal, and are
more likely to make impulse purchases on a website with a high appeal
(Constantinides, 2004; Kim and Eastin, 2011; Wang et al 2011).

Now Pinterest is a website typically for hedonic shoppers, and the aesthetic
balance is heavily biased towards aesthetic appeal. While a website like
apple.com where we can expect shoppers of both types is far more balanced in
its aesthetic. On the other end of the scale we can put sites like Craigslist
or maybe Ryanair, which you will only visit if you have a certain goal. These
sites have an extensive amount of aesthetic formality, and little to no
aesthetic appeal.

I will not list the entire list of literature in this post, you should be able
to find it on scholar with the authors and year. Just send me a message if you
would like to receive the list of articles.

~~~
chewxy
Hey, can't find your email in your profile. Mine's in my profile. I'd love a
list of articles.

Cheers

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stevekwan
As a UX guy, the prevalence of the Pinterest layout has made me cringe a bit.
But I think it definitely has a place, given a few caveats:

1) As others have said, if your site's purpose is more discoverability than
navigability, then this layout may work for you.

2) This layout can work if you have the discipline to pare down on everything
else. I've found that using Pinterest-style layouts has forced us to really
reconsider whether content on our page needs to be there, since everything
becomes so prominent. In some ways it's helped us flatten our IA.

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Udo
As others have noted the widespread adoption of this style has probably little
to do with Pinterest but more with masonry, the JS library that makes this
easy to implement.

I'll be the contrarian here and say these kinds of layouts work better for me
because they make much better use of my screen real estate on any device. I
think this works well for social networking-type applications where you're
skimming through a message stream anyway, or for shopping sites (such as Ikea)
where items jump out at you because the human visual system is very fast at
image filtering.

So I like it. Maybe tiling style layout in general _is_ overused, but I'd
rather see that than any more of those fixed-width column things even where
content doesn't necessarily have to be linear.

~~~
geoffw8
I'm glad you've mentioned Masonry. Literally just yesterday evening we tried
something new with an app that we'd been working on for a good while now,
instead of having standard sized items in a Twitter like (top to bottom)
timeline we thought we'd lay the items out left to right - this meant we had
variable height divs divs stacked row by row - and we have thousands of them.

The fact that they are variable height puts you in a tricky position because
it throws the rows off totally. Stacking them using Masonry was something that
happened out of evolution, not by a "lets make it look like Pinterest"
mentality.

While plenty of people will be cloning the UI of Pinterest because of its
successes you can't write it off as a solution to a problem.

I'll know by the end of next week if it was worth it!

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danboarder
Pinterest makes "browsing" fun for a lot of people and it works very well at
that. Pinterest does show specific categories of content. A similar experience
to compare is Google images, where you provide a keyword and get a similar
infinite-grid layout. Not everyone is searching for something specific; if a
user can browse (or view by keyword, as in Google Images) they can gain
inspiration or direction toward a goal.

Pinterest's UX approach is not worthless - it can and does work for many
interaction scenarios where users want to browse content rather than search
something specific.

Further, I think the two UX paradigms (search vs browse) can work together to
serve the needs of users. Search for specific content can provide exact
results first, and then related/similar results can display in a browsable
pinterest-style grid.

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ThomPete
As someone who have done my fair share of work with with masonery view among
other things this

<http://apps.facebook.com/pinviewer/>

I would say that the pinterest view is great for anyone who want to show a
huge amount of pictures in different sizes in order to allow people to browse
or explore.

For most other things a feed is faster. But a mixture could somehow work IMHO
(as you can see in the example)

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lnanek2
Reminds me of all those UX guys who look at designs and try to think it
through logically and make arguments from their own authority instead of from
data. I remember articles linked here where the designer said users will study
all the options on the page before picking one, lol. Pinterest layouts do well
in user studies and do well in helping people find something interesting to
engage without before ditching your site. Because that's what most people do.
Quick scan of site, don't read anything entirely, nothing interesting, go
somewhere else. Meanwhile, when implementing Pinterest layouts and user
testing them, we've gotten feedback that these thing little knowledge or story
or interest bites or whatever are actually making people feel smarter. It's
mentally rewarding to users to have these little useless mind snacks scattered
across the page that they quickly skim and feel accomplished about. Sure it
doesn't make sense to some clueless designer who tries to make up rules for
everything and doesn't do user studies and tries to argue from authority, but
that's the way it is.

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jeswin
Pinterest wouldn't be the best fit for link sharing sites like Pinchit; the
layout emphasizes pictures over textual content.

I has worked well for an open source images+poetry app I'm beta testing now,
<http://www.poe3.com>. I don't have enough content to show personalized pages
yet, so letting users scan the images on the page has been useful.

~~~
corwinstephen
A brilliant way to display poetry, I'll definitely give you that. I think the
overarching message here is that it works a lot better for art than anything
else.

Cool idea. And a four letter domain name. Impressive!

~~~
jeswin
Thanks. :)

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tsurantino
I think that the author is correct to an extent. One thing that Pinterest has
done is set a precedent for successful design thats predominantly visual
(images, videos, media). This improved the standard of either glossy buttons
or text in general. It made navigating content a much more engaging experience
than it was before.

So while I do think that some websites are using the layout excessively or
incorrectly (and some just straight up copy, like Pinchit) - there is a lot of
value in the direction that Pinterest has chosen in displaying its content.
It's one that has reflected a ripple effect in web design, as photographic and
video content effectively grabs the user's attention on other platforms (ie.
Facebook).

As always, the take-away is that we need design with purpose and must be
evaluating its effects. Not arbitrarily hopping on trends just because.

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DanBC
The Pinterest layout, with some additions and modifications, could be a
powerful way for people to use computers.

Think of music files. People have a bunch of MP3 files stored in a variety of
different directories, perhaps with cover arts.

Presenting a pinterest style grid list of cover art already makes sense.
Include ability to preview the song from the view, as well as launching the
media player. (And then build playlist creation in too.) Now add ability to
group by genre, or time, or BPM, or "your friends who liked this also liked"
(or 'random people on this website who liked this also liked'). You then add a
mode for 'discover music not local to your computer', with links to shops or
YouTube or Myspace (is it still used by bands?) or whatever.

I'd freaking love it.

~~~
pseut
No no no (for music at least). I have absolutely no idea what the mythical
CD/ablum case for 95% of the music I've bought in the last 12 years looks
like. Now I'm using it to organize all of my songs? Let alone the hundreds of
live concert podcasts that have the same identical bland image for their cover
art.

Now, if you want to say that "listening to the radio" is an abstraction of the
UX in the article, sure. And a "curated stream of music" is the way most
people discover new stuff and seems to be the way the people I know use
pinterest.

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schiang
I recall reading an article somewhere that said Pinterest's layout is working
for them because women love the infinite scroll. Since their users are mostly
female, that's probably another reason why it works for them.

~~~
Gormo
Women love using an information layout analogous to a physical format that's
been obsolete for 1500 years due to having been superseded by pagination, and
in which one loses one's place whenever attempting to reference previous
information?

Pinterest is an anomaly; infinite scroll is broken in concept.

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fiendsan
Yeah, I don't agree with this guy, its not worthless, its just diferent,
worthless would be designs that are too confusing or elaborate to get the job
done, just because its overload, doesnt mean it doesnt get the job done, also
personally i do like cluttered layouts for random stuff, if its important its
less usefull but if its just random tidbits its actually way more useful and
fast, same goes for small print! its useful for somethings and not so much for
others, so this guys all or nothing opinion is kinda meh!

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cybernomad99
How about this classifieds website, <http://www.HouseOfNothing.com> ? This
website predated Pinterest. So it is not a copy-cat. It uses five column image
thumbnails display, and it keeps them on the same level so the visitors do not
get disoriented when they land on the site. The front page limits the display
to 10 rows. It does not automatically extend itself to create an infitite flow
of images.. Would it fix some of the problems mentioned in the article?

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barredo
The other example i've seen working of this layout "Tokyo Otaku Mode"
<http://otakumode.com/>

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Goranek
Not sure if it's because of Ubuntu, but your font sucks. It's unreadable, and
yes other webpages look "normal" to me.

~~~
corwinstephen
Really? I've never heard that complaint before. I didn't do much of anything
outside of pick a standard Wordpress template, so I can't imagine it would use
a font that isn't pretty universal.

It's supposed to look like this: [http://www.designfreebies.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/fre...](http://www.designfreebies.org/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/free-body-text-font-cardo.jpg)

My hosting service has been having trouble serving assets recently. I'm
wondering if that might be the problem...

~~~
mkr-hn
Most WordPress themes have bad typography. The first thing I do with most
WordPress themes I check out is change to a good sans-serif font at 14-18px
and a good line height. I also fix the link colors, which most themes make
indistinguishable from each other and the body text.

WordPress theme creators could learn a lot from Tumblr theme creators.

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FajitaNachos
In regards to the part about it being impossible to find something on
pinterest, CTRL+F is your friend. That is, of course, if it's something you've
seen before. The pinterest layout is great for galleries/portfolios. Outside
of that, as the author mentions, there's not a lot of use.

~~~
danso
90% of people don't know how to use CTRL-F, according to Google

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent-
of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/)

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mcintyre1994
Surely whether or not Pinterest can make this layout work to guide the eye or
promote some action is going to determine whether or not they're successful in
a business sense, though?

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ForFreedom
Also their search is worthless <http://ajean.net/2012/12/16/pinterest-search-
is-pitiful/>

~~~
skore
From the article:

> Run a search on Pinterest it gives you totally irrelevant search relevant.

> If Pinterest needs to move forward then their search factor needs to improve
> else its just another bookmarking website with a different theme.

Uhm, what?

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diiiimaaaa
I've noticed another bad practise: many sites use Masonry-like plugins for
everything - even to build simple grid layout where each item has equal size.

Stop using Masonry for everything!

~~~
andrewhillman
I am so sick of seeing pinterest style sites. Are people just not that
creative that they can't create a new style? I am starting to see blogs with
Masonry style.

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rocky1138
Meilishuo would probably disagree since they're making a ton of money with it.

<http://www.meilishuo.com/welcome>

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kanakiyajay
I simply dont agree. Many sites are right now using Pinterest style of layouts
which are masonry inspired. An example will be <http://jquer.in>

~~~
bnegreve
Please stop advertising.

