UX Design

The following is a core project of my work in UX design. With an MSc in Digital Media and UX Design, I was the lead designer in the building of an app called Zini — an app showcasing zines.

My Role:

Lead Designer

2025

Tools:

Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, VS Code

Project Type:

Build comprehsive app as your Major Project for the MSc in Creative Digital Media and UX Design course

Contribution:

User Reasearch

Ideation

Paper Prototyping

High Fidelity Prototyping

Logo and brand design

UI of app

Introducing Zini. Zini is a creative digital community aiming to encourage users to create, upload, and share zines. By building this community, the app allows users to be inspired by other creatives around them and encourages easy access to an artistic outlet for a not so forgotten medium.

The process began with ideation and preliminary user research. We used personas, scenarios and use cases to determine who our users are what their aims, goals, and pain points may be.

Pain points to address:

Zines tend to cost money to read online, making them inaccessible

The small circulation of zines and little reproduction makes them difficult to discover

Many are unaware of how to build their own and may find it intimidating to attempt without guidance, especially when it comes to ideating

It is nearly currently impossible to engage with zine authors/creators from the zine depositories

Aims and opportunities:

Help users find zines in their specific interests

Encourage users to share and upload zines

Teach users how to build their own zines (ideating, folding, etc.)

Make zines a more accessible creative medium

We moved on to treatment design. Beginning with low-fidelity sketches that addressed the pain points.

After testing with our low fidelity sketches it was time to create a brand - choose our colors, type, logo - then begin building a high-fidelity prototype on figma

After establishing the brand for Zini we translated our low-fidelity prototypes into high fidelity ones on Figma. We created interactions between the screens, giving a potential user the sense of what the app may look and feel like… these are just a few images from a full-scale Figma prototype

Zini began as a small idea and interest in zines, that then led to showing so many more people the excitement of zine making and exploring an artistic, low pressure, creative outlet. Zini is a wonderful digital creative community that encourages learning, creating, sharing, and exploring a not so forgotten medium.

Bailey Wu

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