Pocket is more than a bookmarking tool. It’s a fast, clean, reliable way to save, organize, and return to high-quality content. For me, it has been an essential research companion, a digital archive, and a quiet, intentional space amid the noise.
— Niniane Mackenzie
former pocket user
I initially joined Mozilla as a contractor for the Pocket team. The previous team of designers had been laid-off earlier in the year except for one. That designer was then reassigned to another team and I became the lead designer just as the team was given the mandate to evaluate Pocket's standing within Mozilla as a monetizable product. My focus was to juggle improvements to the existing experience, design net-new user-centric features and advocate strategically for Pocket's future from a business perspective.
Pocket was ultimately shut down in July of 2025 much to the disappointment of my team, Mozillians and Pocket users alike. Regardless of the outcome, I'm proud of our work and the overall dedication of the Pocket team during those final months.
The following are examples of projects I worked on during my time there.
My first official project was to improve Pocket's search and filter functionality. This included the introduction of universal search and options for advanced filtering by item type, topic, and publisher.
Previously, Pocket users could only search from their Saves but not from the Pocket homepage or any other page. There was a basic need for universal search, not just for desktop users but mobile as well. From there it also made sense to introduce related features to aid in users' discovery of content with the addition of more advanced features.
I also examined ways to thoughtfully introduce AI functionality into Pocket. I spoke to Pocket users directly, testing wireframed concepts to utilize their feedback and ensure we only focused on positively received features. One specific concept (shown above) was an AI generated report of a Pocket user's engagement, including personalized recommendations along with insights into their saved content.
To learn more, read the case study here.
An example of an existing area in need of improvement was the handling of media formats. Pocket users could essentially save anything to Pocket, but certain types of saves wouldn't always render as expected. Together with my team we identified different media formats with the intention of improving them one at a time. The first format we prioritized was video, as people increasingly consume video content over written content.
Exploring improvements to saved videos meant leveraging Pocket's existing design system while proposing updates to make the system more scalable. I also explored designs for a video playlist design to accompany the existing audio ("listen") feature.
Lastly, I worked with the team on adding additional notes functionality, directly inspired by historical user feedback. This meant core functionality as well as more advanced notes in the form of web clippings.
This intoduced some complexity as it meant reconsidering which features would be for free users versus exclusively for premium users.
To learn more, read the case study here.
Over the last four years, I’ve felt like so many of the places where I used to find 'the good stuff' have died unceremonious deaths. Indeed, my Pocket history is a wasteland of broken links and once-cherished websites URLs now addled with bots. But Pocket allowed you to keep reading the internet even when so many other forces were conspiring against it.
— Anne Helen Petersen
journalist
I saw Pocket's potential firsthand and had no shortage of ideas for additional features and improvements. I'm hoping there will be a future opportunity to make use of this work and finally bring some of these ideas to life.
I learned a lot from this experience, specifically how to thoughtfully balance user feedback with overarching business strategy and how to harness team alignment in times of uncertainty and ambiguity.
For many people, Pocket was representative of an earlier, more user-friendly form of the internet. While bittersweet, it's a privilege to be associated in some way with Pocket's legacy. It further inspires me to design experiences that positively impact others — perhaps in ways that reflect the earlier phases of the internet that inspired me to be a designer in the first place.