Compasionate Search - Overview

Earlier this year, a team at Pinterest built new search advisories for sensitive search terms. One of the main principles of this work was to ensure that we did no harm. We wanted to build on top of this experience and see if we could take it a step further to help even more people.

That’s how Compassionate Search was born: Could we build a best-in-class, gold standard experience to help people in times of emotional distress? When we started looking at the numbers, it was pretty clear that addressing sadness, anxiety, and stress on Pinterest would be high impact. There are 3M+ Pinners looking for these search terms.

Illustrations

My role within the team was to implement the best user experience using the Pinterest branding that exists within the platform while also creating something that is a bit different. I created a set of illustrations to complement to the different coping exercises from this experience.

What we see right now is a user flow from a search query. If you, our user, were to search for "Depression", a module would be prompted with some suggestions on how to improve your mood. If you tap "Take a look" you will be taken to a home feed of twelve exercises that can help to change your emotional mindset.

When illustrating each exercise I thought about the Pinterest brand. I made it playful, but not silly. I chose to make these illustrations a bit abstracted and imperfect like the creative journey a user goes through when pinning things on Pinterest.

You can currently check out the experience by searching: #wellbeing on Pinterest or any anxiety related word.

Art Direction

Additionally, I came up with concepts for the different exercises and animations. For the breathing exercises, I came up with the concept of floating papers expanding and contracting like a breathing diaphragm. I was responsible for the vision and art directed a motion designer. I also chose the color palettes that are AAA approved for Dark mode and standard mode.

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