Skip to content

No.148 · AI & Chat

Voice Orb

A voice conversation reduced to one object: a soft sphere whose clouds breathe with your voice, gather while it thinks and pulse as it speaks — with one line of caption underneath.

The prompt

The design brief behind this component — reuse it to regenerate, remix, or explain it.

Design a minimal, monochrome voice-mode screen: a white (or near-black) field, one sphere, one caption line, two round controls. The sphere (clamp 10–13rem) has a pale blue radial base, three large blurred 'clouds' (blur 18px, multiply blend on light) drifting on 7s / 9s / 11s loops, and a soft top-left sheen. The conversation state changes behaviour, not icons. A single level signal (0–1) scales the sphere up to 7%: while listening it follows the user's voice (synthetic here, an AnalyserNode in production); while thinking the sphere contracts to 0.94 and the clouds turn much faster, as if gathering; while speaking the level follows the reply's syllables and the clouds speed up a little; idle is a slow 5s breath. Muting desaturates the sphere. The caption says 'Listening…', then shows the transcribed question, then streams the reply word by word. Controls: a mic mute toggle (inverts when muted) and a red end button.

Notes

Interaction
Tap the sphere to start; mute or end with the controls below.
Motion
Per-frame level (lerped) drives scale; cloud drift loops change speed by phase; caption lines rise in over 420ms.
Accessibility
The sphere is a button with a state-aware label; captions are a polite live region; mute is a toggle with aria-pressed. Reduced motion stills the clouds and level.
Responsive
The sphere scales with the viewport; controls stay 52px.
On touch
Designed for taps; nothing depends on hover.

Featured

01Glassbreak ButtonA solid plate that fractures from one impact point, cracks racing outward as the shards drift apart.04Liquid GlassA capsule of glass that bends what's behind it, carries a specular highlight around its rim toward your pointer, and squashes like a drop of liquid when pressed.07Phosphor Glass ButtonA liquid-glass pill that senses you coming: its rim light turns to face the cursor and the pill leans in to meet it.08Iris ShutterAn async button with a camera iris for a status light — blades close and turn while it works, then open onto the result.
81Atmosphere CardSmoked-glass link cards: colour pooled in the corners, slow contour currents underneath, a field that leans toward you.93Eclipse Event CardAn editorial event plate with an oversized date and an orbital eclipse bleeding in from the right, alive with slow drift.94Specimen CardAn object mounted under glass: hover lifts the pane with a sweep of reflection and swings out a paper catalogue tag.
95Silk FieldDomain-warped light that pours like liquid silk, with an optional glass lens that refracts the flow under your cursor.106IsobarA living weather map — contour lines traced over a drifting pressure field, with your cursor as a system of its own.
151Prompt ComposerA chat composer where attached files tuck into its top edge like tabs in a folder — they rise from behind it when added and sink back when removed. Send turns into stop while the reply streams.157Aura FieldA writing field where colour only exists while the AI is touching your text: the edge becomes a turning band of light and the words are rewritten in place, one by one, out of a soft blur.
205Halftone CTAA tall CTA banner where slow gold paint drifts beneath a fixed halftone grid, visible only through the dots.
212Nocturne Sign-inA single quiet column on near-black with a breathing seam of frost light behind it — email, password, magic link, nothing more.222Sigil Sign-inA split sign-in whose left half grows a geometric mark from your email — the same address always draws the same sigil.
275Voices CarouselA testimonial exhibition: one large quote at a time on frosted glass, crossfading between voices without ever resizing.
279Feral TitleA brutal condensed wordmark — heartbeat in the dark, letters slam in, a gash tears through and the word bleeds.
301 components