This study presents a new design method for a zoom lens, in which real lens groups are designed successively to combine to form a lens modules zoom system. The lens modules and aberrations are applied to the initial design for a four-group inner-focus zoom system. An initial design with a focal length range of 4.2 to 39.9 mm is derived by assigning the first-order quantities and third-order aberrations to each module along with the constraints required for optimum solutions. After obtaining the lens module zoom system, the real lens groups are successively, not separately, designed to get a zoom lens system. Compared to the separately designed real lens groups, this approach can give a better starting zoom lens and save time. The successively designed groups result in a zoom system that satisfies the basic properties of the zoom system consisting of the original lens modules. In order to have a slim system, we directly inserted the right-angle prism in front of the first group. This configuration resulted in a compact zoom system with a depth of 12 mm. The finally designed zoom lens has an f-number of 3.5 to 4.5 and is expected to fulfill the requirements for a mobile zoom camera having high zoom ratio of 10x.