XIN-CTIONARY

Xincitionary is an open Chinese online dictionary that defines buzzwords and terminologies for teenage gamers and tech-savvy Generation Z through the collaborative effort of a user community. It serves as a crowdsourced dictionary generated by professionals, and a question-and-answer community, where questions and answers are created, edited, and organized by the verified members of the community.

Project type: End-to-end app + Branding
Role: UX/UI Design Lead
Industry: Language Education, Social Media

Background

Buzz words emerging at the rate of 1.5 words per day.

Living a fast-paced digital lifestyle with a tremendous amount of info-sources available, we noticed the difficulty in capturing and comprehending specific aspects of modern Chinese culture has intensified. The Xin-ctionary dedicates to providing atrust-worthy online dictionary that records community-scale news through the circulation and preservation. With straightforward references, it minimizes the opportunity cost for insiders to step into a whole new area, and outsiders to capture the trends of a fluid but exciting foreign culture.

Delivery

Visual Identity

Inspired by ancient Chinese architecture, the logo metaphors a pavilion that collects raindrops (cultural trace) and provides a roof for those overwhelmed by the mass pop trends.

The dream-like teal comes from the traditional Chinese color Tian’Qing ( meaning Sky-Blue), which originates from a unique color of china that can only be produced on rainy days. The carol color, on the other hand, symbolizes authority, which is commonly used for ancient emperors. The Forbidden Palace, for instance, is known for its large-scale adoption of this color for walls and collars.

Gamified UX Mechanics

In the course of our lifetime journey, there are always moments when we develop an interest in someone unmet, something unknown, or some sayings unfamiliar. In Xinctionary, we digitalized the process into a cyber adventure. By tackling the buzzwords, users are characterized as sailors to win rewards, both physically and mentally.

Hi-Fi Prototype

To demonstrate the key offerings of the APP, I created an interactive prototype showcasing the main clickstreams, from the homepage, searching, to vocabulary display, and sharing.

Immediately after the alpha testing with the internal team, it came the first pitching opportunities and then the second. The prototype, though this was still an MVP at the time, played an essential role in the speed pitching to visualize the affordance and the vision of the team.

Pitching Deck Design

Together with the marketing team, I crafted a business pitching deck to present our product to the angel round investors. Since the APP was not officially launched at the moment, the hi-fi prototype made a strong impression by visualizing the ideation and gained great feedback among the audience.