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EHQ is Pinterest's self-serve platform for building in-app experiences

Growth teams used the platform to build educational popovers that introduce new features, but the creation process was complex and time-consuming, leading to missed opportunities for feature discovery and adoption.

The hypothesis

Improving anchor selection could reduce setup time by 85%

Creating an educational popover for A/B testing took teams nearly two months. Early assumptions identified anchor configuration, the step where users select where a popover appears across surfaces (e.g. Homefeed) as the primary point of friction.

The initial goal was to reduce setup time by simplifying this step, but research revealed gaps in that hypothesis.

Key insights

Understanding where teams experienced friction

I partnered with another product designer to conduct contextual inquiries with Product Marketing Managers and Marketing Campaign Specialists. Together, we synthesized our findings into four key pain points that informed the solutions I proposed.

Pain point #1: Confusing configuration

Users struggled to understand how to configure educational popovers due to technical jargon, an unintuitive layout, and inconsistent terminology.

Pain point #2: Inconsistent validation

Inconsistent required field indicators between the Create modal and Configuration form caused users to miss key steps, resulting in broken live experiences.

Pain point #3: Placement uncertainty

Users lacked confidence in where anchor options would appear in the Pinterest app, leading to guesswork and additional edits after publishing.

Pain point #4: Duplicate work

There was no streamlined way to submit the same educational popover across multiple operating systems (iOS, Android) within a single form.

Reframing the problem

How might we enable teams to create educational popovers on their own, while minimizing setup errors?

Research revealed that anchor selection was only one of several friction points. Teams struggled with jargon, inconsistency, and lack of confidence in how anchors would appear in the app. While ideation was a collaborative effort, the following sections highlight the concepts I explored.

solution highlights

Streamlining the creation experience‍‍

Keeping users in context

I redesigned the creation flow by moving it from a modal to a full screen experience with a 'continue' button, allowing users to move directly into configuration instead of returning to the list view.

Improving form clarity

The original create form was developer-oriented, but used daily by product and marketing. I restructured the layout for clarity and replaced technical field labels with language that aligned with users' workflows.

Making anchors easier to find

I redesigned the anchor dropdown to be searchable by keyboard and exclude inactive options, making it easier to find the relevant anchor. We also planned for anchors across operating systems to be automated, eliminating manual work for engineers to add/update these options.

Previewing placements before publishing

I designed a preview feature so teams could see where educational popovers would appear. Ideally, this would render live content, but technical constraints led me to a simplified wireframe look, which still gave users confidence before publishing.

Modernizing the experience

I used Gestalt components to improve consistency and accessibility while maintaining workflow-specific interactions.

outcomes

The redesigned creation workflow is expected to reduce set up time to less than two weeks. Stakeholders found the simplified field labels, searchable dropdowns, and new layout more intuitive, empowering teams to create educational popovers independently and more quickly.

While my contract concluded before release, I partnered closely with another designer to co-lead discovery and I owned key explorations that informed the final product direction.