If Craigslist was Pinterest, it would look like this app

Craigslist is possibly one of the ugliest sites on the web. But you can experience it as if it was Pinterest, as long as you use Mokriya Craigslist on your smartphone.

Mokriya is a design studio that has worked on apps for companies like Hipster, Sidecar, and Path, building cutting-edge, simple, beautiful mobile apps for iPhone and Android. Mokriya Craigslist is its first foray into creating products under its own brand.

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“We wanted to build an experience on par with some of the best mobile apps,” chief executive Sunil Kanderi said. “Using Craigslist should be as pleasant an experience as browsing Pinterest.”

So the company reached out to Craigslist — aware of issues companies like PadMapper have had when using Craigslist data — and worked out a licensing deal, then rolled up its sleeves for a six-month design cycle.

The biggest challenge?

“Craigslist has tons of categories and subcategories,” Kanderi says. “Because the challenges to build a mobile app for Craigslist were more than a usual app, we had to innovate on the UI to create a compelling experience. So we use very few native UI elements.”

While the data is straight from Craigslist, the company has been so successful that browsing Craigslist on Mokriya is actually pleasant, and, believe it or not, beautiful.

And it’s not just about the browsing, either.

“You can also post your Craigslist ads via Mokriya,” Kanderi told me. “Just enter the headline, description, take a couple of pictures, pick a category, set a price, and you’re done. Our goal was that you could post an ad within a minute.”

Mokriya is on iPhone and Android smartphones at first, but an iPad version is on the way. It’s a free app, but if you want to post an ad or add favorites (bookmarks on sales that you want to track), there’s a one-time 99 cent charge.

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Image credits: Mokriya