We sat down with a cuppa and a pack of chocolate biscuits for a quickfire Q&A with our manager, Hannah Baron…
How long have you worked at Zinco?
I’ve managed Zinco for the last two years, in which time we’ve grown from three graphic designers and one website developer to a team of four developers and four graphic/digital designers.
Tell us about life before Zinco?
I’ve worked in full service digital and design agencies for the last 10 years and have always had a knack for being able to translate complex technical detail into manageable everyday language – a key part of being able to implement change and support digital transformation in any business. I’ve managed multiple accounts, from small scale website implementations to large scale software development change programmes, with a couple of major rebranding stories along the way.
Tell us about the Zinco mission?
Our ultimate objective is to integrate design and technology in order to liberate the brilliance of our clients. Our team is made up of graphic and UI/UX designers, developers, programmers and digital ‘wunderkind’. We’re based in a beautiful Arts & Crafts building on the shores of Lake Windermere, but we work with a multitude of local and international clients, including Hayes Garden World, Lakeland Arts Trust and a range of Impact clients, such as Co-op and Sony.
Our services range widely, and include software and app development, website development, logo and brand identity, animations, augmented reality, exhibition and display.
Describe one of your proudest moments at Zinco, so far?
We worked incredibly closely with our partner organisation, Impact, to design and develop an experiential learning platform that would enable Impact deliver behavioural change at scale and at reach. air is our flagship web-based application, it has been designed mobile first with a beautiful intuitive interface and is being used by household brand names such as Sony, United Nations and Street Football World to name a few. Check out the full case study here…
What makes Zinco an awesome team?
We follow a structured, agile approach using the scrum method for ongoing design and development. Scrum is an agile framework for managing knowledge work, with an emphasis on software development. It has been designed to help break the development work into actions that can be completed within time-boxed iterations, called ‘sprints’. Each sprint lasts for four weeks and is managed by a Scrum Master, who helps track progress and monitor scheduled 15-minute, time-boxed stand-up meetings, called ‘daily scrums’.
Within the scrum method, each sprint is required to deliver a potentially viable new feature or functionality that will enhance the user experience of the product. At the end of each sprint, a sprint review meeting is held. During this meeting, the scrum team shows what they accomplished during the sprint; typically this takes the form of a demo of the new features.
We use a number of online tools to support our working processes, including (but not limited to) Trello, Github, Daily, Creative Suite and Microsoft Teams.
The digital landscape is constantly changing – how are Zinco keeping up?
At Zinco we are aware that as we move towards a post-digital era, leaders must begin to look beyond their organisations’ digital transformations. Digital prowess alone will no longer differentiate organisations from their competitors. There is a host of game-changing new technologies positioned to deliver extraordinary new capabilities for businesses, and these technologies will be important catalysts for change in a world in which every industry already has a wealth of digital tools.
And, finally… tell us two things about yourself we don’t already know?
I love most men with a beard and have a borderline unhealthy obsession with avocados.
