by cmsellers » Wed Apr 15, 2020 3:05 pm
So, really this feels like a major rant to me, but I recognize it as an objectively petty First World problem, which feels weird to complain about when MURDA and sully are having to go into work while taking precautions that will probably do as much to stop the spread of COVID-19 as that Nigerian woman's bead mask that's been making the rounds.
See, thanks to Pinterest's horribly crappy UI design, I accidentally deleted a whole board of mine. The board was basically a mixture of stuff I might want to buy down the line when I feel financially sound, and stuff I might want to use as inspiration for crafts when I have the energy to do crafty things again. However weirdly, making this board felt good, I spent hours on it, and it feels really shitty to lose it.
But the thing that gets me is: UI design is hard, I know because I'm now learning to do full-stack web-development instead of the job I was initially hired for. It's probably even harder if you don't understand good UX (user experience) principles, which a staggering number of UI/UX designers seem not to. So, I can forgive the interface being so crappy that it took at least four terrible UX design decisions for me to accidentally delete this board.
What I can't forgive is that, despite years of complaints from users, Pinterest still has no way to recover deleted pins or boards. There are, right off the top of my head, three very obvious things they could do which other website do.
1. Have a "trash can" to which pins and boards are sent. You can even have it auto-empty after a period of time, and let people choose to disable it.
2. Have an "undo" function.
3. Have a feature which lets people auto-backup boards.
Now that I'm learning web development I have some idea of how you'd do all of these things, I know it wouldn't even take me all that long to do, and I'm still learning web development and am completely unfamiliar with Pinterest's architecture. A single experienced web dev who knows Pinterest's architecture should be able to implement any of these in weeks, possibly days (well, auto backup might take a bit longer, mostly for the new interface required) which makes their decision to continue to have no way to recover deleted pins equal parts unforgivable and baffling.