Credit: https://medium.com/@Pinterest_Engineering/building-a-more-inclusive-way-to-search-789f4c92fd73
Pinterest has come up with an amazing new way to make search results easier for everyone. The world catalog of ideas has made changes that will let users filter hair and beauty search results by skin tone ranges. Instead of spending a lot of time on a single search, you can now narrow things down by skin tone and beauty.
Pinterest’s latest change was borne out of a recent survey it carried out that found out that 70 percent of people preferred to use its service to find and save looks and styles.
Pinterest found out that it was difficult to program search filters to detect skin tone in mages. This is based on the fact that lighting, shadows and other factors were among variables to consider.
The only way out of this problem, according to Pinterest, is to introduce machine learning to the process. The company used machine learning from a third-party beauty app called ModiFace—an app that already boast of a facial data library suitable for AI use. This helped Pinterest to train the algorithms not to read white skin in dark shadow as dark skin tone, while correcting other mistakes through perennial testing, reports The Verge.
The feature is still new and obviously has a lot to learn before it becomes ‘flawless;’ and Pinterest appreciates this as a fact. To this end, the company has promised to continue to improve on the new tool to enable users derive the maximum use when conducting searches.
“Once this beta experiment rolls out to all Pinners, our future work will generally focus on improving the accuracy of results and bringing the experience to more platforms,” Laksh Bhasin wrote in a blog post. “We’ll try out new methods of query rewriting and blending in actionable content and hope to improve our search ranking models in order to better take into account the selected skin tone. To make experimentation easier with new skin tone detection algorithms, we’ll have to make a few backend changes to allow us to index multiple detected skin tones and run A/B experiments more easily.”
Pinterest recently updated its feed to now show recent pins from the people and boards you follow. To make it easier to see these pins, the feed will be shown in chronological order.
The feed change is based on observation by Pinterest which showed that pins it placed according to algorithm saw higher engagement than pins from people that users chose to follow. What that means is that its main feed has developed into algorithm that is centered around what users are interested in as well as what they have been pinning about.
Nothing much has changed really because the feed stays the same, but just that users will now get to see latest pins from people and boards they have chosen to follow. Pinterest will give influencers and brands a way to engage more with people on the network. The update will show up as a primary option beside the original feed.
