1. Summarize the problem you set out to solve. What was the challenge posed to you? Did it get you excited and why?

My thesis work revolves around email. Although it is not the newest form of digital communication it is the mostly widely used and in many ways, the most frustrating. I tasked myself with generating new ways to see email and interact with email focusing on alleviating some of the technological overload.

2. What point of view did you bring to the challenge? Was there anything additional that you wanted to achieve with this project or bring to this project that was not part of the original brief?

I was particularly interested in the space between computer science and art. Although that sounds cliche, there are hundreds of academic papers with an HCI/ACM bent and hundreds of art pieces addressing email, but very few that touch both sides.

3. When designing this project, whose interests did you consider? (Discuss various stakeholders, audiences, retailing, manufacturing, assembly, distribution, etc., for example.)

My audience includes urban Americans, born in the 70s with a middle class income. Targeting this group felt the most interesting because this is the set of people who have had to learn how to work while email was evolving in the workplace. People older than this understand the workplace without email and people younger than this don't understand any place without email.

4. Describe the rigor that informed your design. (Research, ethnography, subject matter experts, materials exploration, technology, iteration, testing, etc., as applicable.) If this was a strictly research or strategy project, please provide more detail here.

For my first step, I simply went a week without checking email. I wrote about the experience on my thesis blog daily, sometimes hourly, and afterwards compiled statistics on all the email I received.

I interviewed 6 people in their homes about their email habits and frustrations.

I also performed extensive secondary research covering everything from academic discussions of filers versus pilers to artistic works.

5. What is the social value of your design? (Gladdening, educational, economic, paradigm-shifting, sustainable, labor-mindful, environmental, cultural, etc.) How does it earn its keep in the world?

Email is annoying, persistent, poorly designed and entirely too text-heavy. If there are any complaints about too much information in this new environment, they almost always include email. Bloom provides a new way of viewing email that is less aggressive, easier to organize and fun to play with.

6. If you could have done one thing differently with the project, what would you have changed?

I would have liked to do a deeper dive on materials to, perhaps, create an actual plant, but I only had a few weeks to complete this project from concept to working prototype and so I had to make due with simulating a plant via the external touch screen.