A MESSAGE WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE.
Sometimes you want to send a few words without having a particular recipient in mind. Fortune makes room for that impulse. You can send an anonymous message of up to 140 characters to one person somewhere in the world, with an optional song.
We wanted to design a screen for reaching one person. A recipient can tap a heart to return a thank-you card. It is a brief encounter through words and music, with a different distance from a conversation between chosen contacts. That sense of distance needed to run through the interface as well as the features.
LESS TO READ. MORE TO UNDERSTAND.
Fortune is designed for people beyond Japan. Our aim is an interface whose purpose can be inferred even when the language is unfamiliar. Writing, sending, receiving and responding should be easy to recognise without first studying an explanation.
An envelope suggests a message, a musical note suggests music, and a heart offers a response to something received. We pair these icons with words and buttons. The aim is for shape and text to support each other. Simplicity means selecting the information needed at that moment.
ONE EXPERIENCE. DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.
The sending and receiving screens share a card structure. A change of screen should not require people to learn a new place to look or act. We want the words and music to receive more attention than the mechanics of the service.
For a multilingual product, translating the copy and making the interface work are separate design tasks. The images used in cards contain no embedded text. Country names, messages and button labels are rendered by the interface. Keeping imagery separate from language allows a shared visual expression to be read in different languages. A simple UI also helps us maintain a coherent experience across those languages.
AI IN THE MAKING.
AI image generation is part of Fortune’s production process. We provide character and visual references, then examine composition, light, shadows and material consistency. Our selection criteria also consider what is clear on a small screen and whether the image fits the card.
An attractive image can still be wrong for the interface if it distracts from reading the message. We use AI to make material, then select it in relation to its use. Bringing visual expression and function together in the same screen is central to our practice.
The experience we want to offer is a brief message or a song from someone you have never met, presented naturally and clearly. At Flatbitstudio,Inc., we want to open that small experience to people beyond Japan.