Have you ever even considered using Pinterest as a design library?

Okay I admit it, I'm a bit of a process geek. I love finding new ways to do things. Especially new ways to optimize curation, communication and design team collaboration. And I'm kinda psyched about discovering (or rather re-discovering) Pinterest. I forget the details, but sometime ago, I ran across an article, or a podcast where someone mentioned using Pinterest as a design and pattern library. It sounded like a novel idea, so I gave it a quick try with the project I had open at the time. I found the experience quite effective, but the project was shelved and due to interruption I was never able to get the team fully onboard with the concept.

But as luck would have it, another opportunity to try it out came along soon enough. A client recently engaged us for a b-i-g front end gig. Their request was heavy on design and light on development, they needed a team to drive the user experience, content strategy and to deliver design specs for all major site components and (to my delight) the microinteractions too. The perfect job!

Let's face it, the context in which most of us are familiar with Pinterest is not necessarily professional. We tend to think of it as a tool better suited for fun time, weekends or vacation dreaming. We've all seen the boards used for collecting examples of everything from  vintage slushy machines to sock puppets. But think about it, why not use the platform to collect examples of rollover effects, hamburger menu interactions or home page designs. How is collecting pictures of rare Snoopy tees that much different from curating screen-grabs of e-commerce form components, unique approaches to lead-capture forms or CSS animation examples? well, it turns out it's not that different at all.

The project is just beginning to wrap up. We've got a few more weeks of design deliverables scoped and then we'll move into the maintenance and consultative role as their in-house development team takes the reins. But now's when the power of Pinterest may just begin to make the most sense. Handing off a single link to a client that houses all the examples our team referenced during the front end phase should make ongoing conversations easy. The jury is still out on how the client will respond to this component of the handoff but I have every reason to believe that they'll quickly see the value. Our project post mortem will follow soon enough. I'll make it a point to update the post once all the cards are on the table. In the meantime, I'd recommend giving Pinterest a try on one of your upcoming redesign projects. What can it hurt? It's a well vetted platform made specifically for the unique tasks of collecting and sharing. And it's free. What's stopping you?