Zine Local
An AI-guided discovery tool built with Cursor, Cloudflare, and Supabase for vibe-based event recommendations.
Warsaw has a dense calendar of cultural events, but much of it lives on Instagram and Facebook. If you do not live inside those feeds, finding well-curated experiences is surprisingly hard.
- Role
- Designer
- Scope
- UX/UI, conversational flows, prototyping
- Client
- Personal Project built as an application to AIR accelerator program
- When
- 2025
02Problem
Keyword search fails when you know how you feel—tired, curious, social—but not what genre or venue name to type. I wanted to explore whether a conversational, vibe-led guide could feel like a knowledgeable local rather than another listings aggregator.
03Approach
I designed and prototyped Zine Local as a personal project—structuring mood inputs, preference capture, and curated results backed by a lightweight technical stack.
Scope of work
04Challenges
_Keywords vs. vibe input
Traditional filters assume users can name genres, venues, or dates upfront. Mood-based intent is fuzzy and changes mid-conversation.
→Lead with open prompts about mood and expectations, then narrow to curated lists—accepting ambiguity in input instead of forcing structured filters first.
_Breadth vs. curated authenticity
Listing everything in Warsaw would feel noisy and untrustworthy. Too little coverage would make the guide feel empty or biased.
→Present smaller, opinionated sets of events per session—optimizing for relevance to stated vibe over exhaustive catalogs.
_Bot personality vs. utility
A playful conversational tone could charm users—or slow them down if they just want a fast answer before heading out.
→Keep copy warm and local in tone but shorten paths to results after the first exchange—personality as framing, not friction.
05Outcome
We shipped a conversational prototype that returns curated lists from preference input—a base for exploring vibe-led search as a personal city tool. The project clarified which questions earn useful answers, and where event data quality still limits recommendations.
06Reflection
I learned that discovery UX is emotional before it's informational—people describe days, not categories. The interface has to honor that sequence, not fight it.
If I did it again
If I did it again, I would test with people who deliberately avoid social media, earlier—so edge cases in sourcing and trust show up before polishing UI states.