Use pinned items for deliberate stable prominence, favorites for saved preference or affinity, recently viewed for automatic history, and saved view for reusable presentation state.
Use pinned items for deliberate stable prominence, favorites for saved preference or affinity, recently viewed for automatic history, and saved view for reusable presentation state.
Practice the judgment: Imagine this situation: A user unpins an item and the underlying file is deleted. Write the person's goal, choose one of these patterns, and show the state that helps the person continue. Use the decision rules and source trail below to explain your choice.
Review the underlying principle →| Dimension | Pinned items | Favorites | Recently viewed | Saved view |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UI or UX | UI + UX - Deliberate user or owner-selected items kept in a stable prominent position | UI + UX - User-marked preferred items gathered into a recognizable return-access list | UI + UX - Automatic list of items the current user opened recently | UI + UX - Persisted named presentation state for a data workspace |
| UI guidance | Render pinned items in a clearly labelled section, top zone, or fixed order with item identity, type, owner or scope, pin state, and an unpin path visible near each item. | Show a clearly labelled Favorites or Starred area with item identity, item type, location, ownership or scope, selected favorite state, and an unfavorite control that is visually tied to each item. | Render a labelled list or rail of items the current user actually opened, ordered most recent first, with enough identity to recognize each item such as name, type, thumbnail or icon, location, status, and last-viewed time. | Render saved views as named, selectable workspace presentations with visible owner or visibility, active state, saved layout mode, columns or fields, grouping, sort, filters, and last-updated metadata. |
| UX guidance | Use pinned items when users or workspace owners deliberately keep a small set of high-priority objects, files, links, repositories, records, or widgets easy to return to. | Separate favorites from pinned items, recently viewed, saved views, subscriptions, collections, and recommendations so users can predict whether starring affects quick access, display prominence, delivery, public signals, or only a personal saved list. | Use recently viewed to reduce re-finding effort when users compare items, pause work, resume documents, or return to records they inspected during the current or recent sessions. | Use saved view when users need to return to a complete operational presentation of a changing dataset rather than rebuilding columns, layout, grouping, filters, and sort every session. |
| Good UI | A document library has a Pinned section at the top with three highlighted files, each showing file name, type, modified date, owner, Move left, Move right, and Unpin actions. | A file hub has a Favorites section with file names, file types, folder paths, owner labels, filled star buttons, and an explanation that removing a favorite keeps the file in its folder. | A procurement dashboard shows Recently viewed records with title, record type, status, project, last-viewed time, and a remove control for each row. | A support queue has saved views named My urgent tickets, Team backlog, and SLA breach risk, each showing columns, sort, filters, owner, and private or team visibility before users apply it. |
| Bad UI | Pinned items are indistinguishable from favorites or recently viewed items. | Unfavorite deletes or hides the underlying object. | Recent history becomes a surveillance surface on shared accounts or screen shares. | A saved view list mixes saved filters, saved searches, static exports, bookmarks, and recent pages under one generic Saved label. |
| Good UX | A profile owner selects public projects to pin, previews how visitors will see them, and replaces a stale pinned repository with a newer gist. | A developer stars a repository to return to it later, understands that watching handles notifications separately, and can find all starred repositories from a personal saved list. | A user on a shared account removes an unexpected document from the recent list and understands that Favorites are stored separately. | A manager opens SLA breach risk, sees the board layout, grouped Status lanes, five saved columns, and current result count, then changes density and saves a private copy instead of overwriting the team view. |
| Bad UX | A team pin can be reordered by anyone, so shared navigation changes unexpectedly for every teammate. | A user removes a favorite and loses the underlying record because the product treated unfavorite as delete. | Users trust a Recently viewed rail as a recommendation and choose an irrelevant item because sponsored content was mixed into history. | A user changes one column while reviewing a team queue and accidentally updates the shared default for everyone. |
| Best fit | Users need stable quick access to a small set of known high-priority objects. | Users need to mark preferred or personally important objects for later return. | Users inspect multiple objects and often need to return to one they recently opened. | Users repeatedly return to a specific presentation of a changing data set. |
| Avoid when | The item list should be automatic history, popularity, recommendation, or search ranking. | The goal is to keep a small set at the top or in a stable user-defined order. | The team wants to promote products, recommend next actions, or show related content rather than return personal history. | Only one current-session filter or sort choice needs to be changed. |
| Required state | Pinned section with item identity, type, scope, position, and unpin controls. | Favoritable item state, favorited item state, favorite pending, unfavorite pending, and failed-save states. | Empty or hidden state before any qualifying item has been viewed. | Saved view list with active, private, team, shared, pinned, default, owner, last-updated, and result-count states. |
| Accessibility burden | Use text and accessible state for Pin, Pinned, Unpin, Move earlier, Move later, and Replace actions instead of relying on a pushpin icon alone. | Use an accessible name and state such as Add to favorites, Remove from favorites, or Starred instead of relying on a star icon alone. | Use a heading or labelled region that describes the scope of the list. | Use labelled controls for view name, visibility, layout, columns, grouping, filters, sort, density, and sharing settings. |
| Common misuse | Mixing pinned items with automatic recents, favorites, saved searches, subscriptions, and recommendations in one ambiguous list. | Removing, archiving, hiding, or deleting the item when users only meant to unfavorite it. | Filling recently viewed with recommendations, ads, popular items, or related content. | Saving current rows instead of presentation settings and dynamic criteria. |