Heart of Stone

Heart of Stone is an action-packed espionage thriller, centred around an advanced AI system called “The Heart'“, which has the ability to predict and prevent global threats. The film does an amazing job of visualising how it functions and how users interact with it. Every scene featuring FUI, is beautifully presented and easy to comprehend. This is a real treat for FUI fans, there are plenty of great examples here!

Mission Assist UI

Here is the interface used by Jack, Stone's tactical support during missions. Jack provides critical intel—highlighting alternate routes, enemy positions, and real-time updates on mission success probabilities. Essentially, he's Stone's version of what Ned from Spider-Man: Homecoming (see article) would call the ultimate 'guy in the chair.'

Through the use of holograms, Jack is able to see a god’s eye view of Stone’s surroundings and move things around, setting markers, or highlighting items of interest like a coach in a football game. The interactions feel like a VR experience, but without the controls and headset, Jack navigates with natural gestures, smoothly zooming, panning, and casually tossing elements around with his hands in a similar way to how Tony Stark interacts with UI.

HUDS - Heads-up displays

The HUDs are displayed through contact lenses, much like the tech in Continuum (see article) or Mojo Lens (see article). The clips primarily showcase wayfinding, represented by a cluster of dynamic white nodes alongside a smooth green line that appears to average all the node data points. It makes for a great visual device that focuses your attention and is very easy to comprehend.

Data cloud UI

These scenes do a great job of visuallising big data, it shows that Jack has access to vast amounts of organised data. Presenting the information across a vast, open space gives you the feeling like you’re walking inside a giant catalogue of information, almost like a galaxy of content.

Sphere map UI

I wanted to highlight this specifically because I absolutely love how the map unfurls, wrapping around the user like a sphere. It looks incredibly immersive, and you can imagine how awe-inspiring it would be to pan around the UI whilst standing in the middle of it.

Music player UI

This one was unusual but interesting in it’s own right. It doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the task orientated interfaces in the film, it’s a music player that Jack pulls up before diving into his work. I like how the multi-colour audio visualisation unpacks and wraps around the user in pulsing bars and the radial control is a nice touch too.

Heart of Stone showcases FUI that is both visually striking and thoughtfully designed. There’s consistency throughout and the interactions are meaningful and comprehensive. The UI played a large role in effectively showcasing the power of the Heart (AI) and how much of an advantage it is to have control of it. Congrats to the team!