Creating a New Project

Whether you're building a touchscreen exhibit for a natural history museum, a digital wayfinding kiosk for a gallery, or an interactive learning station for a classroom, every Zibit experience starts the same way: with a new project. A project is your top-level container — it holds all your moments, flows, components, and style choices in one place. This tutorial walks you through the entire creation process, from your dashboard to your first look at the project editor.

Getting to Your Dashboard

This is your My Projects dashboard — the home base for everything you create in Zibit. From here, you can manage all your interactive experiences, whether you're building a touchscreen exhibit for a natural history museum or a wayfinding display for a gallery.

Since you're just getting started, your dashboard is empty. Click "Create new project" (or "Create your first project") to kick things off. Don't worry — you can rename or adjust your project at any time.

The My Projects dashboard page in Zibit, showing an empty project list with a prompt to create a first project and a 'Create new project' button in the top right corner. — Your Zibit dashboard — ready for your first project.

Create Your First Project

On the My Projects page, click "Create new project" (or "Create your first project" if this is your first time) to open the project creation dialog. Then select "Start from scratch" to begin with an empty project using Zibit's default styles — a great starting point for any museum exhibit or digital display.

Once you've made your selection, click "Continue" to move forward. Don't worry — you can adjust styles, layouts, and content at any point after your project is created.

Choose a Starting Template

The "Apply basic styles" dialog helps you set the visual foundation for your project. Choose from "Basic", "Bold", or "Elegant" to apply a style set — a bundle of typography, colors, and layout defaults — that fits the feel of your exhibit or experience. You can also go with "Default Style Set" if you'd prefer to start completely neutral.

Don't worry about making the perfect choice right now. Your style set can be changed at any time after your project is created, so pick whichever feels closest to your vision and click "Continue" to move on.

A dialog box titled 'Apply basic styles' showing four style set options: Basic, Bold, Elegant, and Default Style Set, each with a short description. Buttons for Back, Skip, and Continue appear at the bottom. — Pick a style set to define the look and feel of your new project.

Choose a Style for Your Project

This step is where you give your project its visual identity. Pick a style set — a preset bundle of colors, typography, and design details — that fits the tone of your exhibit or experience. Whether you're building a playful children's gallery or a sleek modern installation, there's a starting point here for you.

Don't stress about getting it perfect right now. You can always update your style set later from within the project editor, so this is just a starting point to get things moving.

A dialog titled 'Tell us about your project' showing style preset options during the project creation wizard, with Back and Create project buttons at the bottom. — Pick a style preset to define your project's look and feel.

Name and Describe Your Project

Give your project a Project Title and a Project Description that reflects what the experience is about — for example, "Ancient Egypt Interactive" or "Welcome Kiosk – Main Lobby". These details help your team identify the project at a glance, especially as your workspace grows.

When you're happy with your entries, click "Create project" to finish setup. Don't worry if you need to adjust anything later — you can update the title and description from your project settings at any time.

The 'Tell us about your project' dialog with the Project Title and Project Description fields filled in, and a 'Create project' button at the bottom. — Step 3 of 3: Add a title and description, then create your project.

Exploring the Project Editor

You're now inside the project editor — this is where you'll build your entire interactive experience. You'll see your project is already named "My First Project" at the top, and a "Welcome to your new project!" panel is open to help you get oriented. Close it any time by clicking "Close welcome panel" when you're ready to dive in.

The editor is organized around moments — the individual screens or states that make up your experience, like a welcome screen for a museum kiosk or a quiz slide in an educational display. Click "Add new moment" to start building your first one. Don't worry about getting things perfect right away — everything here can be changed, rearranged, or deleted later.

The Zibit project editor showing a newly created project called My First Project, with a welcome panel open and an Add new moment button visible in the moments view. — Your new project opens straight into the editor, ready to build.

You've created your project and you're inside the editor — that's the hardest part done. Everything you set up here can be changed later, so don't worry if your name, description, or style set isn't perfect yet. Here are some great next steps to keep the momentum going:

Add your first moment — Start building your experience by creating a moment, the individual screens that make up your interactive flow.
Explore the style set editor — Customize your typography, colors, and shadows to match your institution's branding.
Set up a display — Define the screen resolution and orientation for the device your experience will run on.
Drag in your first component — Try adding a text block, image, or button to get a feel for how the editor works.
Invite a collaborator — If you're working with a team, share the project so colleagues can contribute alongside you.