I wanted a user whose money problems are documented in their own words, so I picked Fyodor Dostoevsky. His letters record ten years of advances spent before they were earned, roulette in Wiesbaden and Baden, and a wife, Anna, who pawned her wedding ring and later cleared every debt. Sorting the letters into an affinity map gave nine pain points. Three shaped the product: lumpy income, where a 3,000-rouble advance against an unwritten novel is gone before the first page; impulse peaks right after a loss, when nothing slows him down at the one moment that matters; and a partner carrying it alone, with Anna absorbing the losses and no shared tools or agreed limits. He didn't lack knowledge about money. He lacked friction at the right moment, and a calm view of what the money was for.
My first idea was a joint account where Anna holds the controls. The letters argue against it: Anna never policed him, and he quit when he decided to, not when he was blocked. Lock-outs push a user like Fyodor to hide spending, which makes the shame worse. The first idea gave Anna the power to set limits and freeze his card: control. What I built instead gives Fyodor the pen: he sets the rules on a calm day, and Anna gets a second look only at the ones he chose. Loosening a rule waits 24 hours; tightening is instant. Everything else follows from this line: Fyodor sets the rules, Anna keeps them.
Four rules came out of that pivot, and I designed every screen against them.
Home leads with today's share, 21 руб., not the 640 left this month, because a big balance invites a big bet.
The pause shows what 200 руб. really is: Anna's ring, bought back.
Every limit is his; Anna sees only what he chose to share.
After a bad night the app names a gap in the rules, not a failure in him.
Twelve hi-fi screens and thirteen motions, built as a working prototype: a joint-finance app where Fyodor writes the rules and Anna only ever sees what he's chosen to share. The visual language and the motion were both designed to work against the thing the product exists to resist: a casino glows, counts up, and calls you back. Zero is paper and ink, built to be read calmly and never shouted. Every screen below is live: tap Replay to watch it play again.
Today's share is the hero, and it is small. 21 руб. a day is a number you spend, not one you bet; for a gambler a big total reads as a stake, so 640 руб. sits as a quiet sentence underneath it. Envelopes and Kopilka are links, never a toggle to a bigger total.
Pay, Set aside, Send sheet, Ask Anna. They sit in the same place on every version of Home, including the morning-after version.
"A gap in the rules, not in you" offers a one-tap fix; the red underline draws the gap between 21:40 and 22:00 instead of scolding.
The two halves of the same moment, on two phones. Fyodor sees his money in real terms and the rule he wrote; Anna sees a calm card with his note, and the safest choice is the primary button.
It counts down from 10:00, and the breathing ring is the only loop in the app.
200 руб. becomes "Anna's ring, bought back" and "your share until Sunday." On Anna's side, Hold until morning comes first and Approve is secondary, so the calm choice is also the easy one; she reads his note before she decides anything.
Inside a casino the app changes mode until 08:00. Only tonight's cap from his own rule is spendable; envelopes, Kopilka and savings lock. His own words come before any number. It mirrors the casino on purpose: casinos raise your limits when you sit down, Zero lowers them.
Unless a rule he set is hit, Anna isn't pinged; otherwise she hears in the 21:00 telegram, like any other day. Walking out gets a short telegram, then a choice: spin the unspent 50 руб. into Kopilka, or keep it.
Casino visuals, none of the mechanics. One long, predictable turn that always lands on 0: no near-miss, no streak, no sound. The skipped bet moves to Kopilka, "A quiet winter in Dresden," and telling Anna is optional.
Writers were paid per printed sheet of 16 pages; Pay per page shows each finished sheet and what it paid for, with the Stellovsky deadline in red.
Zero should feel like the books Fyodor wrote, not the casino where he lost. Each number stands alone on the page like a title, with room around it, so it can be read calmly and is never shouted. Nothing glows, nothing spins, nothing rewards you for opening the app; the quiet is the feature. I tried this against four other period directions (ledger, banknote, telegraph office, the 1866 Igrok) and a dark fintech version. The 1874 Idiot title page carried it best: one centred column, a lot of paper, thin rules, no cards.
The Z seal on telegrams, the rule numerals, and warnings such as a deadline or a loosening rule. Three button weights carry the same discipline: ink-filled for the calm choice, outlined for the second, an underlined word for the third.
The motion borrows from the materials Dostoevsky actually handled. The rules: slow, 400 to 800 ms per move, played once, nothing bouncy, nothing that feels like a reward. The breathing timer on Pause is the only loop in the app, because it is the timer. With reduced motion on, every screen simply shows its end state.
On Home, a wax seal presses the 21:00 telegram and a tap cracks it open; today's share is written in by quill. On Rules, each clause inks in, one after another, like terms entered into a contract they both signed. On Slow money, a clerk rules each dotted line before the amount appears, no counting-up animation, nothing that feels like a jackpot. On Envelopes, a new rule simply slips into place.
To pressure-test the principles I designed the opposite: a margin-trading app called Roulettenburg that uses labelled dark patterns against each pain point. It turns the advance into 10x leverage, shows a near-miss after a loss, sends a 3 a.m. margin call, and pre-ticks pawning Anna's ring. Each screen maps to the Zero screen that answers it. It's analysis, not a product, and I kept it out of user testing because it would lead participants straight to the obvious answer.
Zero answers each pattern the twin uses: the advance goes into envelopes instead of 10x leverage, the near-miss meets a Pause instead of a loss-chasing loop, and the 3 a.m. margin call becomes Anna's calm second look instead of a pre-ticked pawn of her ring.
The sessions are planned and the prototype is built; results will replace this section. I'm testing concept (consent against control, shown as two equal cards, order swapped), Pause wording (a plain warning against money in real terms, to see which makes people stop and which feels judging), and usability (four tasks with five people: add a rule, pay at a casino, answer a second look, leave the table). Success isn't more use. The metrics are envelope integrity, the pause cancel rate, and whether Fyodor still feels the rules are his. Three things I'd carry into the next project: challenge the first idea against the evidence, since parental controls felt obvious and would have failed this user; the right number is sometimes the smaller one, since choosing today's share over the balance changed the whole Home; and motion has an ethics too, since in a product about gambling, every animation had to avoid feeling like a payout.
He didn't lack knowledge about money. He lacked friction at the right moment, and a calm view of what the money was for.
Solo product designer, responsible for research, concept, UI, motion, and the test plan, working from Dostoevsky's own letters as primary source material.