We spend most of our time at home now, and you probably know the intricacies of your home like the back of your hand.

The nuances and imperfections of a place are often what make it so delightful and engaging - even the mundane like a crack on the wall can give character to a space.

Imperfections are also opportunities for designers to critique the environment: to exaggerate, distort, manipulate, or alter an existing condition into something new and playful. Through the slightest material change in the environment, design can modify the narrative of a place.

This week, we will transform our home spaces through elements of delight, play, wonder, and surprise.

Part 1: Identify one experience, one ritual, and one physical characteristic of your home life, and note them in your sketchbook or on a piece of paper. You may have to write down a couple of ideas before you find one that you like best.

Experience: A direct observation or participation in an event. For example: eating your dad’s mac & cheese, sinking into the softness of your couch, smelling the magnolia tree blooming in your garden, hearing your sister’s zoom meeting from the other room.

Ritual: An act or series of acts regularly repeated in an ongoing manner. For example: calling grandma every Sunday, brushing your teeth every morning, setting the table for dinner every night, eating pancakes every Saturday morning, or watching cartoons with your little brother after school time is over.

Object/Physical Characteristic: A distinguishing trait, quality, or property. For example: the crack in your ceiling that you never noticed before, how you can hear your mom’s zoom calls through the air vent in your room, the one wobbly leg on your desk.  

Part 2: Draw a sketch for one experience, ritual, and object you’ve chosen. For the experience and ritual, it may be helpful to draw a storyboard, or a couple of frames that show that ritual at different stages.                                                                                  

Part 3: Re-imagine the experience, ritual, and object. Some prompts for that brainstorming are:

• What brings you delight? Can you incorporate that into your object/ritual/experience?
• How can you add an element of surprise?
• Can you make it more playful or fun?
• How can you emphasize what you already enjoy?
• Can you game-ify it?
• Can you make it more communal (able to be used by multiple people simultaneously)?
• Can you add a whimsical element to make people smile?
• Can you add an element that is comforting or calming?

Write down a couple of ideas for each.

Part 4: For your favorite ideas, draw a sketch of how you would create an intervention in the original experience, ritual, and object. Again, a storyboard might be useful here.

Deliverable:

For each category (experience, ritual, object) make a post in your Virtual Learning Portfolio with the:

1. Title of the experience/ritual/object
2. Sketch of that thing as it is
3. Sketch of your imagined intervention, and what it is intended to do.

NuVuX Global Challenges: Quarantine Cookbook

NuVuX Global Challenges is an ongoing series of challenges for students ages 4 to 18 to share experiences, stories, and ideas, while creating a positive impact in the world through design. Each challenge addresses a theme, giving students the opportunity to address current issues in the world in different ways. This week's challenge is Quarantine Cookbook.

Quarantine Cookbook Challenge

From learning to cook family recipes for the first time to experimenting with new foods, people around the world are rediscovering the joys of cooking while we’re all stuck at home. What have you been eating during the shutdown? Are there new recipes you’ve discovered or cooking techniques you’ve perfected? How has the importance of food and cooking changed for you?

For this challenge, create a time lapse video (90 seconds max) of your dish being created in the kitchen.  You can film yourself cooking, cook with another member of your household, or cook with a friend over video chat-- possibilities are endless!  Parents, cook with your kids! Kids, cook with your family members and friends! Choose your video style and create your timelapse. Submit with the recipe for your dish (written or drawn) and your response to the question: What is this dish and why is it important to you? 

Winners will be featured in NuVu’s digital “Quarantine Cookbook” to be released in Summer 2020!

All proceeds will benefit Off Their Plate, a grassroots organization working to provide nutritious meals to frontline COVID healthcare workers and economic relief to local restaurant workers who have been affected by the crisis.

How Do I Participate?

1. Choose a recipe
2. Create a timelapse video (90 seconds max) of your dish being created in the kitchen (points for style and creativity!!)
3. Submit your timelapse video along with your recipe, and your response to the question: what is this dish and why is it important to you? 
4. Bonus: Submit your blooper reel

How Do I Submit?

1. Submit on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter by tagging @nuvustudio and by using #NuVuXGlobalChallenges. In the text of your post, please include your first name, school, age, and the city and country you are posting from.
2. If you prefer to submit by email, title the email “Quarantine Cookbook” and send your entry to globalchallenges@nuvustudio.org with your first name, school, age, city, and country.

Need inspiration? Explore the presentation at the top of this post to get ideas for your project.

What Happens Next?

After each challenge, we will feature the most creative entries in our newsletter and across our social media platforms. Challenges will be ongoing, and different prizes for the best submissions will be announced and awarded along the way. Towards the end of the 2020-21 school year, a grand prize will be announced for three exceptional participants.

For NuVu’s partners and friends around the world, we ask that each of you share this call for entries with your respective schools and student networks, and to support our shared goal of bringing innovative education and learning to diverse groups of students around the world.

Happy Cooking!

If you have used the NuVu Platform before AND you remember your password, then skip to STEP 4 and 5. If this is your first time using the Platform or if you have forgotten your password, then follow all of the steps below. 

STEP 1: In the top-right corner, click the word "login." 

STEP 2: When the black menu appears, click "reset password," and enter your school email address, and then click "Send Password Reset Link."

STEP 3: Check your BPS email account for an email from NuVu. Be sure to check your junk email folder as well if you don't see the email in your inbox. Follow the instructions in the email to reset your password.

STEP 4: You should now see your name in the top right corner. Success! (your screen will look slightly different than mine). Under "Studios" click on our current studio, "Virtual Innovation Studio" You can also find this studio by clicking on your name in the top right corner.

STEP 5: You are now on the landing page for our studio for the rest of the term! To let me know that you have succeeded in making it this far, make a celebratory comment under the post "comment here!" This post will only appear if you have logged in successfully.