Bloom* review

The Bloom* iPhone app gamifies your day with friendly reminders to motivate, inspire, encourage, and reward. When you are faced with tough choices, schedule a bloom. The Bloom iPhone app is brought to you by the creators of the MindBloom online life game. In an attempt to cut through the fluff and clutter of life, the Bloom iPhone app and MindBloom life game intend to simplify and cultivate happiness.

Blooms are inspirational movies you create and share to give you more purpose and to ground you as you make decisions. The Bloom iPhone app also includes a nice group of blooms, so you can start blooming swiftly. You can remind yourself to make your own coffee to save money. Another bloom reminds you to walk the dog. It is quick and easy to create your own blooms to connect more with your own life. You give it a title filled with action and purchase. You write a caption to further inspire you. You can take photos from within the Bloom iPhone app, or you can add multiple shots from your iPhone camera libraries. You add a song from your library, or you can purchase one through the iTunes music store. The Bloom iPhone app takes these photos, captions, and music to create a lovely movie. Your screen is filled with photos fading in and out across your iPhone screen. The captions pop up in different colors to remind you of the necessity of this bloom. The Bloom iPhone app incorporates one touch sharing functionality to email or to post on Twitter and Facebook.

An interesting functionality of the Bloom iPhone app is the ability to schedule a bloom. You can schedule a bloom to arrive every Monday at a random time. Or, you can give a specific time for a bloom. A pop-up notifies you to check out your bloom. The Bloom iPhone app allows you to set a notification-free time, so your blooms do not wake you from your precious sleep.

The Bloom iPhone app does have a serious flaw in the navigation. It is confusing and far from intuitive. You are directed to play all of the blooms at the top of the screen, and there is another play all feature on another part of the screen. Then, there is an ad for the Bloom Shop, but there is also a Bloom Shop icon. There is a Bloom iPhone app community with a newsfeed, but it’s called notifications. I would recommend a more streamlined process–blooms, your profile, bloom community. When you touch blooms, you can create, review, and share. If you want the latest news from the bloom*mob–as the Bloom community is called, then you know where to find it. The Bloom iPhone app is loaded with content and functionality, but you cannot access it with ease and simplicity.

Overall, the Bloom iPhone app is promising, but it will certainly benefit from greater clarity in navigation.

Clarification: It’s worth mentioning that there are 2 other unrelated apps in the App Store called “Bloom” in addition to the app we’ve reviewed above.
– Bloom $0.99 is a music generation app created by Brian Eno.
– Bloom(c) Free is a companion app for the grocery store in Virginia.