Background
In the last 15 years, voice communication traffic has fallen by about half, mainly due to the impact of messaging apps. Docomo, Japan’s largest mobile phone company, sought a way to remind people of the wonder of communicating by voice.

Creative idea
Each voice in the world is completely unique to that person. This explains why voiceprint authentication works. And why the voice is the best means of expressing a person’s individuality and conveying their emotions. The idea we came up with to reacquaint people with voice communications was to transform voices into something that looks beautiful to the eye and can be given to loved ones.

Strategy
It’s a Valentine’s Day custom in Japan for women to give men chocolates and tell them their feelings. Japanese people are shy and don’t often express their love to others, but Valentine’s Day is an exception. The strategy to remind people of the wonder of communicating by voice was for docomo to market a service letting women give beautifully crafted chocolate that visualized their Valentine’s message to the men they love.

Execution
First, we measured the vibrations of voices and turned them into visible Chladni figures. Using 3D modeling, we transformed the Chladni figures into chocolate molds. Working in collaboration with Mont St. Clair, the most famous patisserie in Japan, we sold the chocolates as Voice Chocolates that let women give their voices, transformed into chocolate, to the men they love for Valentine’s Day. The chocolates were delivered to recipients on February 14. By scanning the chocolate with a special app that recognized AR markers in the chocolate, the recipient could play back a voice message from his Valentine on his smartphone.

Results
The expected number of Voice Chocolates quickly sold out. Many different chocolates were made with original designs based on voices captured with the app. The world’s first beautiful voice communications were completed by sending the beautifully formed chocolates to loved ones. In this way, we successfully designed a new form of voice communication.