Letterbox was created for an exercise focusing on tangible design, a stream of idea’s which wants to move away from all-in-one interfaces and make products more interactive and tangible again. With a product designed through tangible design principles, you get a more logical structure in its use and a more intuitive interaction with your product.

Letterbox is the base-product of a service provided by a collection of authors. The idea is to distribute poetry and stories about subjects the costumer desires. The way it works is simple: the costumer uses the build-in microphone to tell Letterbox the subject or theme which he/she wants a story or poem about. To send the subject or theme to the service center, the costumer closes the microphone back up. An author writes a story or a poem in the next 24h about the subject. During this time the cup (speaker) will go from a cold white color to a warm red. When the Letterbox receives the story or poem from the author, the speaker will pop up, which will make it accessible to the user. The costumer can open the cup, which will activate the speaker. While the audio-poem or story is playing, the cup will return back to its original white color. Afterwards the cup is put back in the docking station and pressed down, locking the cup back in place, closing the speaker and resetting the unit. The microphone is now accessible once again to receive a new subject.