Everyday Ideation

Everyday Ideation: All of My Ideas Are On Pinterest

Rhema Linder

Interface Ecology Lab

Texas A&M University

College Station, Texas

rhema@ecologylab.net

Clair Snodgrass

Interface Ecology Lab

Texas A&M University

College Station, Texas

clair@ecologylab.net

Andruid Kerne

Interface Ecology Lab

Texas A&M University

College Station, Texas

andruid@ecologylab.net

ABSTRACT

We develop new understanding of how people engage in dig-

ital curation. We interview twenty users of Pinterest, a social

curation platform. We ﬁnd that through collecting, organiz-

ing, and sharing image bookmarks, users engage in processes

of everyday ideation. That is, they use digital found objects as

creative resources to develop ideas for shaping their lives. Cu-

rators assemble information into new contexts, forming and

sharing ideas with practical and emotional value. We inves-

tigate cognitive and social aspects of creativity that affect the

digital curation practices of everyday ideation. We derive im-

plications for the design of curation environments that sup-

port information-based ideation.

Author Keywords

information-based ideation; creativity; pinterest; everyday

design; curation

ACM Classiﬁcation Keywords

H.5.m. Information Interfaces and Presentation: Misc.

General Terms

Design, ideation, theory.

INTRODUCTION

We develop new understanding of how people engage in dig-

ital curation with social media to support ideation in ordinary

life. Through a grounded theory investigation of Pinterest,

we ﬁnd that digital curators perceive themselves to be ﬁnding

and keeping information to form ideas. Social and interactive

aspects of digital curation platforms shape the experience of

and its role in everyday activities and design.

A growing number of increasingly popular platforms support

digital curation: collecting, organizing, and sharing content

from the Web [27]. Curation is a creative activity [26] that

employs qualitative human reasoning to gather and organize

items into collections, creating value beyond the sum of each

asset [16]. Exercising creativity, such as by curating, ﬁlls a

deep human need associated with health, well being, self-

esteem [18], learning, and self-actualization [5]. Personally

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CHI 2014, April 26 - May 01 2014, Toronto, ON, Canada

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557273

encountering new facts, concepts, and ideas progressively in-

creases one’s potential for realizing creativity: from mundane

to more eminent manifestations. Ideation is the creative pro-

cess of generating ideas and exploring possibilities.

People commonly gather, analyze, and manipulate objects in

the home in response to needs through iterative processes. In

the concept of everyday design, a critique of creative indus-

tries, everyday people engaged in the same activities as de-

signers [25, 14]. Artifacts and actions serve as resources for

addressing and streamlining life’s situations and constraints.

Curation affords gathering and organizing information.

Kerne et al. deﬁne information-based ideation (IBI) as human

activities involving information in which new ideas are gen-

erated and developed [11]. IBI activities encompass a broad

range of open-ended tasks such as redecorating a room, pick-

ing a thesis topic, and inventing new technologies. As people

engage in IBI, they search for, ﬁnd, organize, compile, and

collect information, creating a curation product. The present

research shows how Pinterest users engage in everyday forms

of information-based ideation.

After conducting semi-structured interviews and analysis of

digital curation in social media via Pinterest, we discovered

IBI phenomena. We found that Pinterest boards are used as

digital media of everyday design. Tens of millions of people

use Pinterest [21] to collect Pins. Pins are based on clippings

[11], i.e., images with short text snippets that effectively rep-

resent ideas within webpages and enable reﬁnding. Pins (Fig-

ure 2) cover many topics [8], including recipes, photography,

tutorials, and health and beauty advice. We report on a sig-

niﬁcant use of Pinterest where users gather Pins as ideas in

meaningful and valuable ways, arranging them into boards

which become design objects.

By everyday ideation, we mean ongoing processes in which

curators look for, ﬁnd, organize, and return to meaningful in-

formation as a means of provoking and forming ideas that

address practical and emotional needs. These curators are in-

formal designers that work with digital representations of in-

formation as design objects. Our contribution establishes that

gathering and shaping ideas is a signiﬁcant activity of digital

curators, who function as everyday ideators.

We connect ﬁndings from creativity, design, personal infor-

mation management, social psychology, and prior studies of

Pinterest. We present our approach to qualitative data gath-

ering and analysis. We derive four interrelated categories of

phenomena: Conceptualization, Social Interaction, Identity,

Figure 1. A selection of P9’s 23 boards she uses to ideate and Keep Found Things Found. She says, I do a lot, like, for the home: renovating or decorating

ideas, I have kid’s room stuff for my daughter, I have a lot of fashion, hair and beauty for myself, party ideas for little parties for my daughter . . . my dream

home . . . food, . . . exercise, one just for shoes, . . . travel . . . and parenting tips. . . . This is where all of my ideas are. I don’t have them anywhere else at all.

and Pinterest Every Day. We conclude by discussing ﬁndings

and developing implications of design.

RELATED WORK

To help formulate theory explaining observed ideation phe-

nomena in Pinterest, we connect concepts from a range of

interrelated research. We identify curation as an inherently

creative activity. Because Pins can serve as bookmarks, we

relate activities on Pinterest to Personal Information Manage-

ment and media of curation. As emerging curation platforms

increasingly employ feeds and sharing, we describe potential

effects of social inﬂuence on both creativity and inﬂuence.

Creativity and Curation

In this work, we report on ﬁndings about everyday ideation.

Kaufman et al. deﬁnes four kinds of creativity. In this model,

kinds of creativity range from the everyday (little-c or mini-

c) to eminent at the societal scale (Pro-c or big-C). Further,

engaging in learning and synthesis can transition everyday

forms of creativity into more eminent ones [10]. Exercising

creativity increases self-esteem [18], and helps one learn and

self-actualize [5]. The present research is based in mini-c

and little-c forms of creativity. Participants reported using

Pinterest to learn and combine.

Digital curation is a creative activity that requires human rea-

soning to collect and organize items into a meaningful whole

[26]. The result is a collection of items with value beyond the

sum of the assets [16]. Kerne et al. analyze media of curation

at two levels: the medium of elements of curation (e.g. Pins)

and the medium of their assemblage (e.g. boards) [11]. Webb

et al. [26] develop a model of the curation process: people

alternate focus among organizing, reﬂection, and interpreta-

tion. Wolf et al. link curation to learning through collecting,

organizing, retelling, publishing, and interpretation [27].

Prior researchers have deﬁned visual media for elements of

curation. Teevan et al. found that for search and revisita-

tion tasks, visual snippets, i.e., images with text overlaid,

better summarize web pages than text or image representa-

tions alone [24]. Rich bookmarks go further, directly enhanc-

ing image clippings with structured metadata, in addition to

affording revisitation [26]. Pins constitute rich bookmarks

by enhancing an image clipping with title, source URL, cre-

ational context (user and board), and sometimes with addi-

tional metadata. The present research addresses how the role

of the medium of Pins as elements of design contribute to

their perception in social contexts.

Everyday Design

Wakkari and Maestri develop a concept of everyday design

in which people commonly function as designers to address

life’s needs [25]. They broaden the deﬁnition of “designer”

beyond professionals in creative industries, potentially to all

people. Maestri and Wakkary describe how families develop

solutions as they make adjustments over time [14]. They de-

scribe phenomena of appropriation, i.e., remaking an artifact

by placing it into a new context and thereby personalizing it.

This corresponds to Kerne et al’s ﬁnding of Pins as digital

found objects and elements of curation [11]. We see every-

day design on Pinterest on two levels: (1) ideators gather and

appropriate Pins as “ideas”, (2) boards function as media of

everyday design. We present data showing how people use

boards for pragmatic and emotional reasons, such as enter-

tainment, comfort, and life planning.

Personal Information Management

Jones et al. performed an extended workplace study, investi-

gating practices of Personal Information Management (PIM)

for keeping track of URLs and content via browsers, email,

and handwritten sticky notes [9]. Their functional analysis

Figure 2. P9’s board, entitled Hello Lover is “Just about shoes.” Its title

refers to a recurring line in the series Sex In the City where the main

character exclaims over expensive designer shoes. Placing shoes in this

context changes their social signiﬁcance.

develops aspects of effective bookmarking strategy: porta-

bility, persistence, ease of access, ease of maintenance, and

ease of sharing. Jones et al. title their work with an insightful

question, “Once found, what then? [9]” The present research

looks deeply into personal experiences of meaning and value

in ongoing collections to answer their question anew.

Lindley et al. interviewed seventeen participants to investi-

gate PIM on websites for personal archive, e.g., Flickr, Gmail,

and Pinterest [12]. They identify ﬁve types of content, in-

cluding collections that are curated online (e.g. Pinterest),

and “content for consumption” and “content for the moment”

(e.g. Twitter). We observed phenomena of development over

time as well as daily planning on Pinterest. The present re-

search focuses on PIM in which users engage in ideation.

Social Psychology and Creativity

Amabile takes a social psychology approach, modeling cre-

ativity as a function of three components: expertise, creative

thinking skills, and motivation [1, 2]. She distinguishes be-

tween intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motiva-

tion originates from within the individual, e.g. curiosity, drive

to solve a problem, or enjoyment from performing creative

tasks. Extrinsic evaluations, such as being penalized for miss-

ing deadlines, are detrimental to creativity. Amabile com-

pared the performance of students writing silly essays under

two conditions: expecting evaluation of content, and expect-

ing to self-rate their mood [22]. Students who were told their

content would not be judged produced more creative essays.

Likewise, our participants do not feel judged or watched as

they Pin. This positively impacts creative self-efﬁcacy.

In some circumstances, however, extrinsic motivation can

foster creativity. For example, when a consequence is per-

ceived as bonus rather than a penalty, creativity may be pos-

itively impacted. The repin mechanism works as a conse-

quential bonus to Pinterest users. It does not create a sense of

impending evaluation.

Cialdini develops the principle of social proof, which states

that one way people reason about expected behavior is to ob-

serve the actions of those around them. For example, children

who were frightened of dogs were shown a video of a boy

playing with a puppy. Four days later, sixty-seven percent of

them voluntarily climbed into a pen with a dog. The effects

of social proof are most powerful when the subject sees the

other person as similar. When a person sees that someone like

them can do something, they expect to be able to do the same

thing [6]. On Pinterest, we argue that continued exposure to

diverse content pinned by others perceived as ’like me’ to a

user encourages them to approach unfamiliar interests and try

new things.

Pinterest’s medium of elements is the Pin, and its medium

of assemblage is the board. Users curate content by pin-

ning from the Web, and repinning: using others’ Pins. They

may originally add a Pin by entering a URL, clicking a “Pin

Me” button from a website, clicking a bookmarklet that en-

ters the current URL for them, or uploading a picture directly.

Alternatively, repinning, which accounts for four out of ﬁve

Pins [21], enables users to copy any Pin they see to their own

boards, while retaining attribution.

Pins can also be “liked” and commented on. To store and

organize pins, users curate content into boards (See Figures 1

and 2). Pinterest supports a variety of ways to follow, browse,

and ﬁnd Pins. A user can search, browse categories, and view

popular content and streams of Pins from boards s/he follows.

Pinterest supports a variety of ways to follow, browse, and

ﬁnd Pins. Pins are visualized in a ﬂow layout that places them

contiguously into columns.

Gilbert et al. [7] collected a detailed algorithmic sampling of

Pins from around the world. After analyzing a large sample,

they found eighty percent of Pinterest users are female and

twenty percent are male. They also compared comments on

Pins to tweets on Twitter. Rather than using statistics, we

investigate Pinterest qualitatively.

Hall et al. categorized activities on Pinterest as collecting, dis-

covering, collaborating, and publishing. They investigated

both professional and personal Pinterest activities, describing

Pins as boundary objects with ranges of interpretation [28].

We explore how Pins and boards are conceptualized, attain

practical and emotional value, and support everyday ideation.

METHODOLOGY

We conducted a qualitative study to investigate the perspec-

tives of Pinterest users through experiential data. We engaged

in a grounded theory methodology, building theory in a con-

stant comparative process of data collection and analysis [23].

The goal of our study was to develop a better understanding

of how and why people curate digitally.

Organizing Phone Interviews via Mechanical Turk

We conducted twenty telephone interviews with Pinterest

users that we organized via Mechanical Turk. Mechani-

cal Turk allows individuals or businesses to post small jobs,

called “HITs”, (Human Intelligence Tasks) that Turk workers

may browse and complete for monetary compensation [15].

Name Age Sex Occupation Hrs

P1* 31 f teacher 2

P2 54 f IT project manager 5

P3 23 f photography studio manager 6

P4 27 f not employed 2

P5 27 f part-time admin 3

P6 30 f equestrian facility 7

P7 25 f bartender 3

P8 23 f shift manager at a restaurant 10

P9* 32 f works as a personal banker 9

P10 29 f doctors assistant 1

P11 27 f mother 9

P12 55 f works as a lab technician 5

P13 33 f freelance transcription 5

P14 45 f playground supervisor 5

P15* 32 f secretary and mother 10

P16* 27 f parental consultant 6

P17* 66 f grandmother 6

P18 25 m works as an artist manager 13

P19* 36 f math teacher 8

P20 25 m works in sales 4

Table 1. Table of participants, name, age, gender, occupation, and the

number of reported hours of spent on Pinterest per week. Asterisks

indicate we were able to collect curation products.

Turk workers are usually offered jobs that are menial and pay

in amounts lower than a dollar.

Our HITs contained instructions to call a phone number for a

ﬁfteen to thirty minute interview. A Pinterest user called from

ten to forty minutes after a HIT was posted. Speaking with

participants directly removed the need to perform data vali-

dation. We conducted each interview, later fully transcribing

it for analysis. To vet very casual users of Pinterest, we asked

that workers only take the HIT if they had collected at least

100 Pins. To make calls inexpensive for participants, we re-

stricted the HIT to workers within the United States. To lower

chances of receiving spam workers, we only accepted work-

ers with an acceptance rate at least ninety percent.

We interviewed eighteen women and two men, echoing Pin-

terest [21] and Mechanical Turk [17] demographics. One par-

ticipant used Pinterest solely for professional reasons (P18).

A few used Pinterest for both work and personal collections.

The majority solely used Pinterest non-professionally. In this

way, our data addresses everyday users and their experiences.

Participants were diverse (see Table 1). They reported using

Pinterest between one and thirteen hours per week.

Data Collection and Analysis Process

We conducted semi-structured interviews, allowing the re-

searcher to focus on questions most relevant to each partic-

ipant. This allowed the subjects to discuss at any length

what they saw as most important. We organized the inter-

view guide questions by topic, and then from the most basic,

broad questions to more speciﬁc, higher level ones. This hi-

erarchy encouraged the participant to think critically about

their own actions, and gave them time and a basis for artic-

ulating their thoughts and feelings on a topic. This process

often led to the participant naturally going on to answer ques-

tions that had not yet been asked. Ultimately, our interview

process gave the study ﬂexibility, allowing each participant to

independently highlight information and phenomena unique

to their individual experiences using Pinterest.

After each interview, brief observational notes were recorded.

After every ﬁve interviews, researchers convened to discuss

the data and iteratively revise the interview guide. This it-

erative process helped us to ask clearer, more speciﬁc ques-

tions to pursue emerging phenomena. For example, instead

of, “What do your boards mean to you?” We began to ask,

“What makes your boards valuable to you?” This wording

elicited less confusion and deeper responses from partici-

pants. The interview guide contained twenty-one questions

in the ﬁrst draft, and sixty-seven questions by the ﬁnal ﬁve

interviews. Interviews ran from eleven to forty-ﬁve minutes

long, depending on the participant.

After a majority of the interviews were complete, two re-

searchers independently open coded the transcriptions, not-

ing themes that were interesting or persistent. Coding in this

context refers the analytic processes through which data are

fractured, conceptualized, and integrated to form theory [23].

We developed over thirty codes initially. We compared notes

and codes, ﬁnished the interview and transcription process

completely, and grouped codes and phenomena into cate-

gories. Four main categories of data were established. The re-

searchers then selectively coded using these categories. This

process gave us experiential insight into the motivations and

behaviors of Pinterest users.

Adding Artifacts

After interviewing participants, we wanted to see the boards

they made so that we could connect interview transcripts with

artifacts participants created. We used Mechanical Turk’s

API to send an email inviting our participants to perform a

HIT to this end. Seven of the twenty responded. For each

of these participants, we collected a PDF snapshot of their

boards and user page as seen from a web browser. The arti-

facts provided complementary visual context to our analysis.

RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

We present our analysis derived through open and selective

coding, which form the basis of our theory.

Conceptualization

Our participants appropriate information from the Web into

Pins as resources for ideation, conceptualizing them as ideas

that serve particular purposes in situated contexts. In Ama-

bile’s model, creative production is maximized when creative

thinking skills, motivation, and expertise are high. Partici-

pants reported being motivated by Pins (see Figure 2). Pins

link to information resources, such as tutorials, which can

support users’ increasing their expertise. We found that par-

ticipants apply information-based ideation and creative think-

ing skills in seeking, collecting, analyzing, and testing ideas

from Pins.

Pins Are Ideas

In answering questions about Pinterest, our participants use

the word idea to describe Pins they collected. They use

the words “Pins”, “things”, and “ideas”, along with concrete

nouns, interchangeably. The overwhelming majority, eigh-

teen out of twenty participants, referred to looking for or col-

lecting Pins as “ideas”. Gilbert et al. provide statistical evi-

dence that the word “idea” plays a key role in distinguishing

comments on Pins from tweets on Twitter [7]. We interpret

this to mean that forming and presenting ideas is essential to

how everyday ideators use Pinterest as a social medium of

curation. We found that Pins support engagement in ideation

by providing rich representations of many “different” ideas.

P11: I like that [Pinterest] has different ideas . . . [for

making] crafty things for your house.

P12: I’d much rather do Pinterest [than watch TV], be-

cause there’s so many different ideas out there to look

at.

Pins enable ideation, revealing previously unknown concepts

and approaches. Everyday ideators use Pinterest to be in-

spired, not only by newfound ideas, but also by others en-

gaged in everyday design in unexpected ways.

P7: [Pinterest] has a lot of ideas that I wouldn’t think of

on my own and they’re really neat, and that you can just

try just around the house. . . . [There are] a lot of creative

things that you can ﬁnd on there.

P11: Pinterest is a direct ﬁeld to what you want in certain

crafts. . . I can type in “wreath”, “homemade wreath”,

and it directs me tons of different ideas for wreaths,

where if I go on the internet, I’m going to have to search

through ﬁfty million things.

People also think of and treat Pins like things. When talking

about their boards, they do not say that they have pictures

of things, but use diction consistent with owning corporeal

collections. Similarly, they show each other pins from phones

and other devices directly, as if they were objects.

Pins Are Flexible

Pins and boards span a wide range of topics. Our participants

appropriate Pins for many aspects of their lives.

P4: There’s a few [boards] that are for recipes: various

types, one for alcoholic drinks, one for non-alcoholic

drinks, one for vegetarian foods, one for just dinner

ideas, a dessert one, I’ve got a Dr. Who board and one

that’s just cats, one that’s just cake, like some design

ones. . . and then lots of crafting ones.

Pins are used as a digital shorthand, connecting products or

tutorials to the common to-do list.

P17: I redid my closet, in the hallway . . . I got the idea

from Pinterest and I used it to plan out like what I was

gonna buy and what I needed for that project.

P4: I pin things . . . that I plan to do in the future.

Everyday ideators curate Pins to suit personal means of emo-

tional fulﬁllment, including entertainment or comfort.

P4: I just, I really like cats and if I’m ever, in, like, a bad

mood, pictures of cats being ridiculous kinda cheer me

up.

Pinterest users curate Pins for both personally practical and

emotional reasons, planning for life’s current and future

needs.

More Than Pictures

Because Pins link to web pages, they are used as a visual

medium for bookmarks. Many participants reported being

frustrated with Pins that do not link properly to source pages.

An example would be a user a intending to buy a product

represented by a Pin, but it is sold out or was made with a

temporary link. Mis-linked Pins are sufﬁciently common that

a website P5 mentioned, thehunt.com, rewards those that ﬁnd

substitute or original product links that correspond to images.

P12: I wanted to collect recipes off the internet, and

rather than bookmarking them, I just wanted an easier

place to put them to get easier access to them.

P17: If [a Pin] looks pretty, then that will make me go to

the blog to investigate it.

The medium of Pins as rich bookmarks, combining images

with links and metadata, enhances how people experience

them. As our participants appropriate information from the

Web, they situate them into a board with personal context.

Ultimately, Pins as elements of curation are ﬂexible and serve

many purposes in fulﬁlling emotional and practical needs

through ideation.

Social Interaction

Comments on Pinterest are rare, usually occurring among

friends and family. Social actions mostly go unnoticed, re-

moving inhibitions typically experienced when authoring so-

cial media. Though Pinterest does not support direct messag-

ing, participants use alternate digital media and face-to-face

communication to talk about Pins and boards. Ironically, de-

spite the myriad of repinning, users perceive Pinterest as a

solitary space for collecting ideas. They see other social me-

dia, such as Facebook, as spaces for conversation, e.g. self-

promotion.

Commenting on Pins

Our participants rarely comment on Pins. Seven said they had

never commented on Pinterest, despite long-term use. P19

uses Pinterest 8 hours a week, but has never commented:

P19: Um, not really no. I didn’t even realize we could

[comment on Pins] until I saw somebody else comment

on one, but I’ve never commented on one.

When participants did comment, the Pin was usually authored

by a friend or family member.

P7: Sometimes, [I comment on Pins], if I like it and if

it’s somebody I know.

While Pins display the attribution of who pinned and repinned

them, our participants report that they pay little attention to

the Pin authors, unless it is a friend or family member.

P18: I mainly focus on the Pins themselves, the ideas. It

doesn’t really matter who the person is. Are they really

famous or not, or somebody that’s pinned something that

I’ve liked before? It doesn’t really matter.

P8: I don’t [pay attention to the Pin author] because a

good idea is a good idea either way.

Despite the public nature of boards, Pinterest users do not feel

scrutinized as they pin. They are more interested in the Pins

themselves than where they came from, or who found them.

This contributes to the feeling of anonymity in Pinterest users,

which serves to dampen the kind of extrinsic motivation that

is detrimental to creativity.

Pinterest allows a user to make up to three “secret” boards

that can be only be seen by the creator. Four participants

report having secret boards. Secret boards may contain ideas

for health, life goals, or Christmas presents.

P11: [My secret boards are] like diet stuff I put in one

board; and, then, when my daughter’s birthday [was

coming up] I didn’t really want other people to see what

I was going to do for it, so I put that in the board as

well. . . . There’s certain things I don’t really need every-

one else to know, that I’m on a diet or just, I feel, that’s

just something I keep private in my life.

Comparing Sociality In Other Networks

We asked participants to compare aspects of using Pinterest

to other social media platforms they use, such as Facebook,

Twitter, and Instagram.

The social actions of pinning or repinning are generally pub-

licly visible. Yet, Pinterest users do not feel watched or

judged. Forte et al. [28] compare the semi-anonymous feel-

ing of using Pinterest to walking unnoticed through a busy

marketplace. Participants enjoy the feeling of separateness

afforded by Pinterest. It creates a sense of personal space.

P13: On Facebook and Twitter, I felt a little more con-

nection with the people posting, so comments would

be a little more personal. But with Pinterest . . . I don’t

really feel personally connected with people. Which

makes me like it more, actually. Yeah, I actually pre-

fer to be a little separate from people. . . . It makes me

not feel as involved, which means that it doesn’t take as

much of my energy.

P12: It seems more private in Pinterest than it is in

Facebook, because it feels like Pinterest is just for me.

. . . [On] Facebook everyone else is seeing everything, I

guess some people are seeing it [on Pinterest], but they

don’t know me, I guess.

Because users feel that they have a separate space, they are

not pressured by extrinsic judgments on the quality of their

Pins and repins. According to Amabile’s model [2], this

avoids “killing creativity”.

Participants contrast this sense of uninvolved sociality with

social networks, which users sometimes grow tired of, caus-

ing them to take breaks or even delete their accounts alto-

gether [4]. Other social networks are seen as venues for self

promotion. Pinterest is seen as space for sharing things and

ideas, with few social constraints.

P10: [With Pinterest], it’s like “Let me share this cool

thing I found with you”, but not like, “Oh look at me.”

. . . Facebook is more for family and friends more, to

keep in touch . . . Pinterest is more like sharing ideas.

P9: I just haven’t seen the negativity on Pinterest that

has been on Facebook. . . I know they’re not gonna make

mean comments or tell me I’m stupid. . . I don’t think a

lot of people even comment on stuff. They just repin it.

Our participants report that getting a “repin”, when a Pinter-

est user Pins something from another’s board, is a minor, yet

positive, social interaction. The repin is not expected, but it

is a welcome occurrence.

P8: It makes me feel like I’ve got a good idea that some-

body else wants to use.

P2: Oh it’s a compliment. Um, not only is it nice to

know that someone shares my interests, it also feels like

someone complimented you. It makes me smile every

time I see that someone repinned it. . . . Like someone

patting you on the back is what I think of.

The repin produces extrinsic motivation which encourages

creativity because it is an unanticipated bonus. Repins pro-

vide encouragement without making users feel obligated to

engage in further social interaction.

Identity

We ﬁnd that Pinterest affords exploring and shaping identity.

We asked participants, “Who do you pin for?” They consis-

tently report that they pin for themselves, and sometimes for

their families as well.

Identity can be understood through sets of personal attributes,

such as interest, skills, and beliefs [20]. Our participants use

boards to express interests and motivate personal change. As

they revisit collections over time, they sometimes reﬂect on

how their sense of self has changed.

Pins accrue intrinsic value as users develop new tastes, hone

skills, and become motivated. Boards attain an irreplaceable

quality as everyday ideators integrate them into their lives,

making them very valuable. Repeated exposure to others’

Pins constitutes tacit social proof, making new goals and per-

sonally untested ideas appear achievable.

Discover ing Tastes and Interests

Participants used curation as a means to discover and artic-

ulate tastes and interests. P14 uses curation on Pinterest to

learn about herself and discover her tastes over time.

P14: I . . . thought . . . if I collect enough of these pins,

I would be able to get a visual [sense] of my style.

Like something would emerge, like a common theme or

something that would help me understand myself more.

P4 uses Pinterest to broaden her interests.

P4: I think I’ve expanded the types of recipes and every-

thing that I try . . . I can bake bread better. I make lotion

and soap now!

Personal Value

As Pinterest users acquire Pins, they feel their boards accrue

intrinsic and practical value.

P20: [Pinterest is] almost like a record book, for me, so

it has almost more of an intrinsic value than . . . putting

a status update on Facebook . . . that no one really cares

about. [Pinterest has] an emotional value . . . It gives me

kind of a archive to hold on to things that I think are

important.

Personal attachment to boards increases with their size and

use, seen in P9’s response to the question, “What would you

do or what alternative would you turn to if Pinterest shut

down?”

P9: I’ve got 3,600 Pins so far. . . I would just die, espe-

cially my recipes . . . I don’t know what I would do.

Social Proof

In Cialdini’s concept of social proof [6], people observe the

actions of others to help them understand what is socially ac-

ceptable and personally achievable. This effect is most pro-

nounced when observed actions are performed by people per-

ceived as similar. A user will sometimes sense that another is

“like them” because the other user curates Pins that are rele-

vant to their interests or similar to their own tastes. Common

situations, such as birthday or dinner parties make ideas and

tutorials on Pins seem personally achievable.

P5: I didn’t even know how to cook or, how to do the

simplest meals. [Pinterest] gives me step by step [in-

structions], and I see other people trying it. Then, I’m

like, “Okay this isn’t that hard.” . . . I’ve seen people

[on Pinterest], like, I should be their friend because they

have all the same stuff as me.

P11: My daughter’s ﬁrst birthday was last Wednesday,

so I used it to plan her ﬁrst birthday party. . . . I typed

in “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse” [to Pinterest search] and

I got different ideas from different people that have had

birthday parties. . . from decorating, food ideas, on craft-

ing ideas, so I took everything off of Pinterest, basically.

Pinterest Every Day

Our participants replaced prior entertainment habits with Pin-

terest, in part because they believe it uplifts their lives. They

see Pinterest as a better use of time compared to other forms

of entertainment, such as watching television. From spare

moments to hour-long sessions, users are constantly growing

boards, looking for new ideas.

We asked participants to describe a typical Pinterest session.

We found that those who spend less time on Pinterest each

week tend to use it in bursts during in-between time, espe-

cially on a mobile device or tablet. Those who used Pinterest

ﬁve or more hours a week replaced or augmented other en-

tertainment habits with sustained sessions, in which they use

Pinterest for an hour or more. P2 uses Pinterest as part of her

daily routine, comparing it to the habitual act of reading the

newspaper. Because Pinterest is accessible on many devices,

such as mobile phones, participants such as P10 can use Pin-

terest in short bursts that last only a few minutes, several times

throughout the day.

P2: Growing up, we’d always have the newspaper, right,

and that’s what you read in the morning and go get your

breakfast. And now I have a laptop instead . . . Part of the

news is Pinterest.

P10: [I use Pinterest] whenever I have a few minutes

here and there, a lot of times I’ll be on my phone. Or

if I’m on my laptop I’ll go on. But it varies it could be

morning, it could be late at night. Just whenever I have

spare time.

Participants made quick decisions on whether or not to repin,

reporting that they take fewer than ﬁve seconds to determine.

They experience excitement when they encounter Pins wor-

thy of collecting.

P20: Usually I just go on kind of just for visual stimu-

lation, . . . but I don’t go on with the intent of ﬁnding a

speciﬁc pin or speciﬁc content.

P19: If it’s funny, . . . and if I think it’s gonna be useful,

. . . how it looks, how easy it is to understand, [If] I can

look at and get right away, or . . . If I don’t have time to

do it right then, I’ll pin it so I can look at it later.

Our participants used Pinterest on a daily basis, growing cu-

rations over time. We observed two kinds of seeking behav-

ior: (1) casual browsing with no particular goal in mind, such

as with P10, and (2) responding to a speciﬁc IBI task, such

ﬁnding a new hairstyle.

P10: I log in like just once a day and . . . I kinda just go

through things and pin them if I like them. . . . I don’t

have the time to go through because there’s so many like

sites I’m on and other things I need to take care of.

P13: I’m usually browsing for particular things. I’ll be

like I might be looking for like a new hair product, or a

new hairstyle. . . . I don’t have a lot of time so I just stay

focused.

We asked participants, “Have you ever ﬁnished a board?” All

users responded that they had never ﬁnished a board. Cura-

tion on Pinterest is an ongoing process.

P9: Finished a board? . . . Is there like a limit to how

many pins we can have? Because I mean, I didn’t know

if you could limit one out or not. . . . There’s always more

ideas that you can pin.

In daily use of Pinterest, our participants grew boards to

address the needs of life, both practically and emotionally.

Boards are constantly altered by Pinterest users in ongoing

processes that become entwined with everyday life.

DISCUSSION

We discuss how everyday ideators use boards as a medium

for design, curating for different purposes. Pins, once ap-

propriated into boards, function as uniquely contextualized

found objects. The meaning and utility of these found ob-

jects change as people exercise creativity and invoke their

ideas. Social perceptions of Pinterest help motivate everyday

ideators, increasing their expertise and creativity.

Everyday Ideation

Pinterest users engage in everyday processes in which they

look for, ﬁnd, organize, and return to meaningful informa-

tion as a means of provoking and forming ideas that ad-

dress both practical and emotional needs. They see Pins as

ideas, assembling them into boards with speciﬁc purposes.

Through pinning and repinning, they curate personally mean-

ingful archives, engaging in self-directed information-based

ideation. While everyday designers manipulate furniture and

objects in the home to support daily routines and activity,

these everyday ideators grow boards which function as de-

sign media of curation.

Pinterest users often have an information-based ideation task

in mind, such as P17’s trip to Italy with her daughter, or her

plans for weekly meals and entertainment for her friends and

family. P17 makes weekly meal plans on Pinterest, and each

week, she adds Pins to a temporary board for meal planning.

After she tries a recipe, she moves the Pin into either her

“Tried It Loved It” or “Tried It Wouldn’t Make It Again”

board. In this way, P17 curates a reusable repository for re-

sponding to her life’s needs.

As social online curation platforms grow, more people use

them for everyday ideation. People appropriate information

to address life’s needs, and use curation to plan, motivate, and

expand their interests. The phenomena of everyday ideation

we observed on Pinterest are a product of general human

needs, the affordances of the Pins / boards conjunction as a

medium of curation, and the Pinterest platform’s support for

social interaction.

Appropriation Into Pins as Found Objects

Through the act of choosing a Pin and placing it into a board,

a user changes its context and purpose, transforming an image

clipping into a found object. Duchamp introduced Fountain

as a found object under the alias, “R. Mutt”, by placing a uri-

nal in an art exhibit [13]. He appropriated the urinal, creating

new signiﬁcance and meaning by changing its context and

function. The creative act of ﬁnding, choosing, and placing

an object or Pin into a new context changes its meaning and

function.

As Pinterest users curate Pins, they appropriate them to suit

their own personal needs and taste. Personal context deter-

mines a Pin’s purpose and meaning. For example, P17’s Italy

board contains a Pin of a “salted rose” pastry. In a dessert or

food board, the salted rose would not have locational signif-

icance, but P17’s board maps out activities for P17 and her

daughter’s trip to Italy. The salted rose pastry Pin in this con-

text carries additional meaning as a planned activity involving

Italian culture. Fitness and life planning boards similarly ap-

propriate and recontextualize Pins.

To Duchamp, changing the place and title of a found object

has the potential to transform its useful signiﬁcance [13]. In

this same way, a board’s title transforms its Pins’ meanings.

P13 collects shoes in her board “Hello Lover,” referencing

a recurring line in the television series Sex in the City; the

main character, Carrie Bradshaw, has a strong afﬁnity for de-

signer shoes. This reference possesses cultural connotations

of wealth, sexiness, and style. Pinterest users apply cultural

references to board titles to add meaning and personality.

Motivational boards exemplify the appropriation of heteroge-

neous found objects. P9’s board, entitled “Motivation!!!!!”,

includes 144 diverse Pins, including an image of a bowl full of

yogurt, fruit, and nuts, and pictures of women exercising on

the beach. Again, Pins are transformed and accrete meaning

through the context of a board. ”Motivation!!!!!” integrates

the practical function of providing tips to become healthier

with visual reminders of the ideal self. It serves as a source of

personal strength. Similarly, while the cats P4 curated come

from a variety of sources with different original purposes, the

context of her board uses them to provide her with comfort

and entertainment. When P4 is in a bad mood, she uses her

cat board to help feel better. This curation serves her as a

useful and meaningful assemblage of found objects.

The Purposes of Pins

Pins are ﬂexible. Everyday ideators appropriate information,

pinning and repinning with particular purposes. Purposes we

encountered include: motivation, planning, ideation, goal-

setting, to increase expertise, to comfort, to entertain, and to

self-actualize.

P5’s recipe board motivates her to try new things. P11 col-

lected ideas to plan her daughter’s birthday party. P13 uses

a secret board to set longterm life goals. P12 has increased

her crocheting and cooking expertise. P4’s cat board enter-

tains and comforts her. P14 uses Pinterest to self-actualize,

expressing and developing her style and interests in the pur-

suit of “learning about herself”.

The purpose and meaning of Pins and boards may change

over time. Consider P17’s trip to Italy with her daughter.

When she started the board, she had the practical purpose of

planning her trip. After her trip, she did not delete her board

because it still held value; its meaning evolved to represent

memories of her vacation. When she goes on another trip,

she can reuse Pins. For example, one of the Pins on the Italy

board includes a comprehensive checklist of items to bring

on international vacations. When P17 needs this Pin again,

it will be easily accessible. In this situation, the board be-

comes practical again, while still retaining its emotional sig-

niﬁcance. Similarly, many kinds of boards evolve in meaning

as context and needs change. For example, food, vacation,

and wedding boards may become more meaningful after the

events they were created for have passed.

When users take ideas from Pins and invoke them, such as

following craft guides or traveling to planned destinations,

Pins become more meaningful. P17’s board Try It Loved It

contains one hundred Pins, mostly recipes. This personal-

ized archive is a system she uses to plan meals. Pins’ accrue

what P20 calls “intrinsic value” serving both as a record and

a reusable system.

A Social Medium For Not Killing Creativity

In Amabile’s model [2], motivation and expertise are key for

creative production. Pinterest’s medium of curation affects

motivation by providing a sense of unevaluated workspace,

the opportunity for a bonus validation, and a culture of posi-

tive feedback. Everyday ideators’ expertise broadens through

repeated exposure and social proof.

Pinterest provides a sense of unevaluated workspace. In

curating, our participants ironically felt nearly anonymous.

Users feel free to work on Pinterest without judgement, in

contrast to social networks like Facebook and Twitter. To

P12, everyone sees everything on Facebook, but “it feels like

Pinterest is just for me.” Pinterest users see boards as works

in progress rather than ﬁnished ones. This sense of virtual

solitude averts the extrinsic evaluation that can kill creativity.

At the same time, pinning creates the potential for a repin,

which acts as a motivational bonus. To have a Pin repined

provides outside validation of one’s ideas. From P2’s per-

spective, the repin serves as a compliment because another

person shares her interest. P2 compares this to a pat on

the back. Comments on Pinterest, while rare, are also over-

whelmingly positive.

Our participants used Pinterest to increase their expertise, and

often felt other users were similar to them. Participants re-

ported seeing many “different” ideas from others with whom

they share common interest. They are constantly exposed to

ideas from users they follow and Pins others have collected.

The effects of social proof strongly inﬂuence a person’s per-

ception, making unfamiliar activities seem achievable. In try-

ing new things, people gain skills and expertise, key compo-

nents of creativity.

IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN

We develop implications for design of social media of cura-

tion that support everyday ideation, addressing the represen-

tation of media of curation and the level of sociality of shared

workspaces.

Curation Media: Assemblage of Image Clippings

Represent elements of curation with image clippings. En-

able them to be visually assembled. This will support expres-

sion, decision making, and juxtaposition as scaffolding for

ideation.

Pins, Pinterest’s elemental medium of curation, are image

clippings that function as rich bookmarks [26]. Pins pos-

sess visceral and informational value. For most participants, a

Pin’s image is most important. Images convey implicit infor-

mation that is immediately understandable. Our participants

enjoyed looking at and collecting images they consider beau-

tiful and inspiring. For example, P4’s looks at her collection

of cat images to feel better.

The visual semantic nature of Pins helps users choose and

evaluate their metadata. Our participants prefer Pins that

catch their eye, are easily understandable, or are in a partic-

ular style. In searching Pinterest or browsing large boards,

they evaluate many Pins. Participants reported taking fewer

than ﬁve seconds to decide to pin. They rely on fast visual

cognition when choosing and reﬁnding. Metadata affords ex-

ploration of the source page, board, or original pinner.

Boards show Pins together, visually assembling the elements

of curation into rich juxtapositions. Combining content in

different ways stimulates the generation of new understand-

ing and ideas [11]. P14 uses boards as a basis for reﬂection.

As she curates, she looks for emergent themes that build and

express a sense of her style. Baddeley has established the role

of human capabilities involving visual cognition and integra-

tion, beyond cognition of text [3]. By invoking visual, textual,

and integrative human cognitive capabilities, the medium of

boards of Pins provides scaffolding for ideation. The medium

affords everyday ideation in ways that textual entries and in-

dividual element views cannot.

New contexts are created by assembling digital found ob-

jects as Pins into boards. P9’s “Hello Lover” (Figure 2)

board develops layers of cultural context through image clip-

pings, metadata, and assemblage. The medium of boards

of Pins also contributes to social context. They build so-

cial proof, making unfamiliar activities, such as making soap,

seem achievable, because people “like me” perform them.

Support Lightweight Collaboration

Create spaces for lightweight social engagement and collabo-

ration that simultaneously enable independent work and ac-

cess to others’ ideas. Pinterest users pin for themselves.

They rarely comment on Pinterest. Users report that Pinterest

avoids negative external evaluation, which Amabile showed

is detrimental to creativity [2]. P13 reported that it takes less

“energy to Pin” than to post on Facebook, because she expe-

riences Pinterest as “her own” space.

Ironically, despite users reporting that they experience Pinter-

est as a separate space, four out of ﬁve Pins are repins [21],

copied from another user’s board. Anyone may curate a pub-

lic Pin into their own board, constituting a lightweight form

of collaboration.

As participants’ Pins were repinned, they felt encouraged, but

not obligated to further engage socially. Pinterest notiﬁes the

owner when someone repins. This reinforcement encourages

engagement through pinning, without an onus for follow-up

social action. While 7 of our participants had never com-

mented directly on a Pin, they frequently repin.

Prior experiments in brainstorming in Engineering Design

show that restricting overt communication, e.g. textual or

verbal interaction, generates more ideas in groups [19]. In

C-Sketch, a technique for collaboratively generating ideas,

people communicate visually, without textual or verbal com-

munication during ideation. To begin the technique, a per-

son starts a sketch. Next, s/he passes it to a group mem-

ber to continue sketching. This is repeated until ideas con-

verge. C-Sketch supports individual ideation to increase cre-

ative production. Pinterest users also communicate visually.

They assemble Pins into new contexts, combining ideas. Be-

cause P17’s Italy board contains many repins, it constitutes a

lightweight collaboration among many Pinterest users. These

collaborators only needed the medium of the Pin and social

affordance of the repin. Create spaces where lightweight col-

laboration is supported, but overt communication is not re-

quired, to foster everyday ideation.

CONCLUSION

We formulated the notion of everyday ideation, in which peo-

ple engage in popular curation activities as a means of gen-

erating ideas, which they see as enriching their lives. We de-

veloped a new understanding of how social media of digi-

tal curation can support everyday ideation. Using grounded

theory, we discovered that everyday ideators use Pinterest to

gather information and form ideas through the medium of

Pins. Boards constitute a medium for assemblage of Pins to

support planning, goal setting, comfort, entertainment, gains

in expertise, and self-actualization. By appropriating Pins and

information from others, people use boards as lightweight

social contexts in which they juxtapose and recontextualize

found objects, supporting information-based ideation.

As a social and collaborative platform, Pinterest fosters cre-

ativity with “just for me” workspaces, which remove fear of

evaluation, while enabling positive feedback. At the same

time, social proof effects from constant exposure to others’

Pins encourage users to expand their expertise and interests.

Everyday ideators create new meaning in ongoing processes

of appropriating information in response to personal needs,

shaping ideas through media of curation into systems that im-

prove their lives.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work is funded through NSF Grant IIS 0747428.

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