The Boredom Book: Design during The COVID-19 Pandemic

Here to help resolve boredom and teach design skills.

Contributors: Alexandra Rempe, Charlotte Wall, Isaac Sonnenfeldt, Stephanie Rempe, Vlad Barbulica

There have been many changes and disruptions during this time, to say the least. My team and I all left Brown University to continue the semester through remote learning. This was a new experience for us all, and we learned a lot about education through the navigation of remote learning. Together, we identified the successes and faults of online education, and we felt there was a gap to fill in teaching design. So, we brainstormed the concept and different aspect of design, as well as ways to teach it to others.

Design is…

(i) Applicable — design is everywhere and in everything

(ii) Current — people and companies are trying to design masks, medical equipment, and other resources to tackle the Pandemic

(iii) Accessible — a topic that can be taught through an online experience

(iv) Important — we believe that developing strong design skills is applicable to virtually any job and overall beneficial for life

(v) Fun — design projects are a great way to spend your free time and be creative

Through social distancing, people are experiencing boredom and ways to spend the time. Many people are also relying much more on their digital devices for communication, school, jobs, entertainment, etc.

Taking these aspects into account, my team and I wanted to create a place for people to engage in design activities they can do at home with relatively few resources. And though doing these activities, they can develop and further their design skills. Also, we wanted to give people activities that aren’t revolved around phones or computers.

I introduce…

A digital book with activities that prevent boredom and challenge your design thinking.

Project Overview

The Boredom Book is split into sections that highlight different types of design: crafts, architecture, furniture, engineering, and apparel. Each section has a unique approach to design and offers a variety of easy and difficult activities. Below is an overview of each section.

Design Sections

CRAFTS

You have to start somewhere when learning design concepts. A great way is through simple activities to foster a joy of designing and creating. In this section, you will learn how to pot plants and paint bottles, among many other projects. You might be wondering: what do these activities have to do with design? Great question. When potting a plant, you understand placement and its relation to its setting. Once you start thinking about these ideas, you begin to design a landscape! This is basic landscape design and from here, you can tackle more challenging projects and continue practicing design thinking. Just because these activities are simple, doesn’t mean you won’t learn a lot from them.

ARCHITECTURE

In this section of the book, you will learn about the basic principles of architecture and engage with designing spaces and structures. The section focuses primarily on gaining familiarity with architectural drawings and scale, forming the foundation of architectural communication in the design phase. In addition, introductions to different methods for 3-D projection, including isometric projection, one-point, and two-point perspective will teach the reader how to elegantly communicate their designs in two dimensions.

ELECTRONICS

Electricity is everywhere! It keeps our lights on, power’s our phones, and helps us communicate with people all over the world! In the electronics section of the book, you will learn the basic principles of electricity such as voltage, current and resistance using real life analogies and lots of hands on experience. You will get comfortable identifying common circuit components, and learn to breadboard series and parallel circuits. You will learn about Electric and Magnetic fields, and cool physics phenomena such as Lorentz Force and the right hand rule. In addition you will gain experience with microcontrollers and computer science, culminating in some cool projects like building your own speed tracker, your own keyboard, and making pixel art!

Going Forward….

This is just the start of The Boredom Book. We are continuing to develop the concepts and pages of the book. Stay tuned — exciting things to come!

We will continue to update our progress on Medium. Follow us on Instagram for more updates: https://www.instagram.com/the.boredom.book/