Pinterest Product Designer Case Interview: Pinner Growth and Inspiration-to-Action

This case simulates a real Pinterest product design working session focused on taking a Pinner from inspiration to action while honoring Pinterest’s Pinner-first culture, safety, and craft. You’ll tackle a visually led, mobile-first problem in the Growth or Core Discovery surfaces (Home feed, Search, Pin close-up, Boards, or Shopping). The interviewer plays PM/Eng partner and probes for depth in product thinking, visual design, experimentation, and collaboration. What the case covers: - Problem space: Help a new or returning Pinner successfully plan a specific life moment (e.g., a small-apartment kitchen refresh) by discovering, organizing, and acting on ideas. Balance inspiration with clear next steps (save, board creation, click to merchant, or trying an idea). - Users and ecosystems: Consider Pinners, creators, and merchants; how content supply (Pins/Idea Pins) and demand interact; and how personalized recommendations work at cold start. - Constraints and principles: Design with Pinterest design values (Pinner-first, inclusive, crafted, responsible inspiration). Use Gestalt (Pinterest’s design system) patterns thoughtfully; call out when/why you might need net-new components. Respect integrity and safety guardrails (e.g., sensitive topics, compassionate search, shopping quality, ads separation and disclosure). - Prompts you may receive (one primary, one stretch): 1) Design an onboarding + early-session experience that helps a new Pinner plan a kitchen refresh and connect inspiration to action. Optimize for first-week saves and board creation without overwhelming the user. 2) Improve the Pin close-up and related recommendations for shoppers discovering sustainable cookware; define how to surface quality merchant signals while keeping the experience inspirational. - Expected artifacts (whiteboard/figjam level): Problem framing and success metrics; target user + JTBD; candidate north-star and guardrail metrics (e.g., save rate, close-ups per session, outbound clicks, weekly active Pinners, board creation rate, D1/D7 retention, content safety incidents); key flows and wireframes; empty/error states; content strategy and visual hierarchy; instrumentation plan; A/B test hypothesis; MVP scope with clear trade-offs. - Time split (typical): • 5 min: Brief + clarify assumptions (platform, markets, logged-in state). • 10 min: Goals, success metrics, and risks (inspiration vs. action; safety; creator and merchant ecosystem health). • 20 min: Ideation to 2–3 solution concepts; choose one and dive into the primary flow (e.g., onboarding interest capture → Home feed modules → Pin close-up → Save/Board → Shop or Try). • 15 min: Systems thinking, edge cases, inclusivity (e.g., skin tone ranges filters for beauty, accessibility, localization), and Gestalt usage; show states (loading/empty/offline). • 10 min: MVP scoping, experiment design, and rollout (holdouts, guardrails, long-term retention considerations). • 10 min: Stakeholder walk-through and trade-off discussion with Eng/PM; define what you’d ship in v1 vs. vNext. - Evaluation rubric (how you’re assessed): • Pinner-first product sense and clarity of the problem statement. • Ability to connect visual discovery to concrete actions (saves, boards, shop/try) without hurting inspiration quality. • Craft and systems thinking: clean IA, content strategy, state handling, Gestalt literacy, accessibility and inclusivity. • Data and experimentation fluency: hypotheses, north-star + guardrail metrics, A/B test design, interpretation risks. • Collaboration: crisp verbal framing, trade-off negotiation with PM/Eng, and practical MVP prioritization. What good looks like: A grounded, hypothesis-driven solution that uses Pinterest-native patterns (feeds, modules, boards, Pin close-up) to reduce choice overload, highlights visual signals, measures both short-term actions and long-term inspiration quality, and explicitly calls out safety/integrity and ecosystem impacts.