Bloom

The brief

Most personal massagers are designed to look impressive in unboxing photos. Bloom started from a different question: what does an object designed to be held — for a long time, with one hand, possibly in low light — actually want to feel like?

I spent the first four weeks of my capstone not modelling, but holding things. Bars of soap. River stones. The grip section of three different car shifters. The body of an old Pentax. I logged each one — weight, contact area, where it warmed up, where it cramped my hand.

What we built

A quiet single-motor massager with an asymmetric silicone shell, a 4-position rocker control set into the natural resting position of the thumb, and a charging cradle that holds the device the way you'd actually want to set it down.

Comfort is not a finish you apply at the end. It's the entire problem.

The silicone formulation went through five iterations to land on a Shore-A 18 outer skin over a Shore-A 50 core — soft enough to feel intentional, firm enough that the form holds.

What I'm proud of

• The control rocker has zero label silkscreen. You learn it in three seconds because it's where your thumb is anyway.
• Operating noise at maximum setting: 38 dB. (Industry average for this class: 52–58 dB.)
• The cradle is an integral part of the experience, not an afterthought.

What I'd do differently

Run the user research wider — I leaned on a tight cohort of 8 people over a 12-week study. The next version of this lives or dies on whether 80 people can pick it up and immediately know how to hold it.