Bloom is a home assistant that helps parents in Romania break taboos about sexuality and gender by normalizing age-appropriate sex education conversations with kids at home. It is designed as a stackable kit with three physical parts, a voice assistant, thematic cards, and a listening object, plus a corresponding app. These components provide tools and methodologies to help parents reflect on their influences and biases and facilitate positive conversations with their kids about intimate topics.

How it works

The interaction model centers four activities: learning, unlearning, reflecting, and talking.

• Learn: Parents explore age-appropriate articles, podcasts, and trusted resources.

• Unlearn: A space for parents to question the myths, inherited assumptions, and cultural taboos they were raised with.

• Reflect: Parents start in the app to answer prompts and consider personal experiences and knowledge gaps.

• Talk: Parents and kids together use the voice assistant, cards, and listening object to have healthier conversations around sex education and health.

The app gives parents a private space to learn and reflect through articles, podcasts, myth-busting information, prompts, and conversation histories. The physical components move this process into shared conversation, offering different ways to participate through speaking, listening, asking questions, and responding to scenarios.

Bloom is a facilitator. It is designed to help parents build knowledge, question assumptions they may have inherited, and practice more open communication with their children. Its educational framework draws on the WHO’s Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe.

The physical prototype uses light and audio feedback to communicate when Bloom is listening, speaking, thinking, or experiencing an error. Its modular form is inspired by the cornflower, with rotating petal-shaped layers that can be stacked in different configurations.

The project was developed in collaboration with Lara Rodrigues Ristic, Antonia Andreea Siran, and Lolita Goncharova for Multimodal User Experience Design for Products in SUPSI’s MA in Interaction Design, led by Serena Cangiano and Alice Mela (2025).

Role: Concept, research, physical design, interaction design

Tech stack: Arduino Nano ESP32, MAInD PCB, LEDs, microphone, speaker, Gemini API, PLA fabrication

Read the full documentation.