In-app Guidance Creation

Overview

EHQ is Pinterest's self-serve platform for creating in-app experiences that guide users

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.

discovery – The initial hypothesis

Improving anchor selection could reduce setup time by 85%

Creating an educational popover for A/B testing was taking teams nearly two months. Early assumptions pointed to anchor configuration, the step where users select where a popover appears across surfaces (e.g. Homefeed, Profile, etc) as the consistent point of friction.

At project kickoff, the Product Manager proposed a clear success metric: reduce setup time by 85%, by removing friction in anchor selection. It was a strong starting point, but as we explored the problem, I started to notice gaps in that framing.

Key insights

Identifying where teams experienced friction the most

I partnered with another product designer to conduct contextual inquiries with Product Marketing Managers and Marketing Campaign Specialists to observe how our primary user groups create educational popovers. Together, we synthesized findings and focused on addressing four key pain points that directly informed the solutions I proposed.

Pain point #1: Field titles, descriptions, and layout were difficult for users to understand due to the technical jargon. Additionally, educational popovers were being called “tooltips" within this platform, conflicting with design system guidelines where tooltips serve a different purpose.

Pain point #2: Inconsistencies between the initial Create modal and the Configuration form for indicating required fields, led to required information missing and broken live experiences.

Pain point #3: Users lacked confidence in where the anchor options listed in the dropdown would appear within the Pinterest app if selected, resulting in guesswork and more time spent on edits after publishing.

Pain point #4: 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 product teams to confidently create educational popovers on their own, while minimizing setup errors to enhance the Pinner experience

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.

Standardizing our enterprise tools

EHQ didn’t follow a singular design system, resulting in inconsistent components throughout. I leveraged Gestalt to modernize and unify the tool, while ensuring alignment with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

solution highlights‍

More space, less friction

I redesigned the experience creation flow by moving it from a modal that returns the user to the list view to a full screen with a 'continue' button, reducing unnecessary clicks between creation and filling in the details.

I also added visual cues to required fields, so users know what is needed before submission.

Redesigned form layout

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.

Smarter dropdowns

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

Placements preview

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.

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.