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Bureau of Sanctioned Sketching

What if we could give adults permission to play and draw again?

Skills

Research

Card Game Design

Prototyping

Team

Wayne Kim

Course

Final Project at CIID

8 weeks, 2025

Advisors

Rina Shumylo

Chris Downs

Jose Chavarria

Overview

Adults don't stop wanting to play. They stop believing they're allowed to. Somewhere between childhood and a career, play turns into something you're either good at or you quietly give up on.

Drawing, one of the earliest forms of play, is usually the first one to go. The Bureau of Sanctioned Sketching, a card game, brings it back by giving adults official permission to draw again, without the self judgment.

How It Works

Three stacks, one minute, one shared canvas.

Draw sets the subject. Using sets a physical constraint, eyes closed, non-dominant hand, whole-arm movements only. While sets a rule for interacting with the people around you. Blank wildcards let players write their own constraints.

One Deck, 3 Jobs

Strangers or new colleagues: Replaces awkward pre-meeting small talk with a low-stakes environment where no one has to perform competence

Established colleagues: Provides external permission to share, enabling lighter connection in professional rooms where raw vulnerability feels out of place

Old friends: Acts as the main event to rekindle creative play for people who used to make things together but stopped

Across all three, the deck is doing the same thing at different intensities. Its job giving permission in the form of guidance and traction for someone to draw.

Strangers or new colleagues: Replaces awkward pre-meeting small talk with a low-stakes environment where no one has to perform competence

Established colleagues: Provides external permission to share, enabling lighter connection in professional rooms where raw vulnerability feels out of place

Old friends: Acts as the main event to rekindle creative play for people who used to make things together but stopped

Across all three, the deck is doing the same thing at different intensities. Its job giving permission in the form of guidance and traction for someone to draw.

The Challenge: Blank Page Paralysis

The real question: can permission be designed?
Guided by Goffman's performed selves and Huizinga's magic circle, this project explores the space that precedes play: permission.

I interviewed 14 adults (ages 23-40), play designers, and therapists, and ran a 47-person drawing survey.

What I found: the block isn't about skill.

"I wouldn't really know where to start."
"I'd like to but I suck, so maybe I'll go for something else."

The real question: can permission be designed?
Guided by Goffman's performed selves and Huizinga's magic circle, this project explores the space that precedes play: permission.

I interviewed 14 adults (ages 23-40), play designers, and therapists, and ran a 47-person drawing survey.

What I found: the block isn't about skill.

"I wouldn't really know where to start."
"I'd like to but I suck, so maybe I'll go for something else."

Key Insights

1. The block has a start date.
People can point to exactly when drawing stopped being play, usually around age 9 to 13. This aligns with Viktor Lowenfeld's "period of decision" where unencouraged children stop drawing and carry the belief "I can't draw" into adulthood.

"From high school onward we were told to draw more of serious stuffs... it was not fun anymore."

2. Freedom without constraint is just another blank page
Without explict boundaries, absolute freedom creates anxiety. Participants actively invented their own micro-rules to escape it, organically forming the core mechanics of the project's final card stack.

"Not lifting the pen while drawing, eyes closed, left hand instead of my stronger right hand, going with the flow."

3. Shared exposure lowers the stakes.
More than half of survey respondents cited embarrassment or fear of judgment as the block. Vulnerability becomes easier when it is collective.

"Group drawing would help, if everyone was doing the same thing. No need to be great, just produce something."

"From high school onward we were told to draw more of serious stuffs... it was not fun anymore."

"Not lifting the pen while drawing, eyes closed, left hand instead of my stronger right hand, going with the flow."

3. Shared exposure lowers the stakes.
More than half of survey respondents cited embarrassment or fear of judgment as the block. Vulnerability becomes easier when it is collective.

"Group drawing would help, if everyone was doing the same thing. No need to be great, just produce something."

Design Principles & HMW

Four core design principles emerged from early prototyping and held true throughout the entire development process:

Permission to Begin: Lowering the barrier to entry.
Playful Constraints: Replacing infinite choices with strict yet silly rules.
Flow, Don't Overthink: Prioritizing momentum over perfection.
Contagiously Fun: Creating an environment where joy spreads naturally.

How might we help adults rediscover the joy of drawing in everyday life, without pressure, and without needing to call it art?

Early Prototyping & Happy Accidents

Before the direction: prototypes, and one dead end.
Spinning canvases, three-minute sketch prompts, an Arduino rainstick for digital co-painting, standing collaborative drawing games. I unified these into "Happy Accidents Studio," motion-tracking software with gesture control, watercolor blooms, and echo trails.

Before the direction: prototypes, and one dead end.
Spinning canvases, three-minute sketch prompts, an Arduino rainstick for digital co-painting, standing collaborative drawing games.

I unified these into "Happy Accidents Studio," motion-tracking software with gesture control, watercolor blooms, and echo trails.

It didn't work. Initial playtests made that clear.

So I went back to every prototype and asked what each one had actually taught me.

Prototyping BSS

Stepping back from Happy Accidents Studio, four lessons became Draw, Using, and While.

A three-minute prompt. External justification and a time limit brought relief. → Draw: bureaucratic authority that legitimizes "unproductive" play.

Physical constraints. People relaxed once perfection became impossible. → Using: limitations that feel like invitations, not judgment.

Shared space. Improvised rules created permission on their own. → While: collaborative constraints.

Happy Accidents Studio, revisited. Real technology limited accessibility. → Card format: portable, no tech, works anywhere.

Stepping back from Happy Accidents Studio, four lessons became Draw, Using, and While.

A three-minute prompt. External justification and a time limit brought relief. → Draw: bureaucratic authority that legitimizes "unproductive" play.

Physical constraints. People relaxed once perfection became impossible. → Using: limitations that feel like invitations, not judgment.

Shared space. Improvised rules created permission on their own. → While: collaborative constraints.

Happy Accidents Studio, revisited. Real technology limited accessibility. → Card format: portable, no tech, works anywhere.

Playtesting

What stood out: people stopped noticing the cards were cards.

"I forgot about cards and only drawing until someone changed them."
"Fun engaging with someone else, shared space, little fights like bumper cars."

A momentum effect took over.

Once people were into it, some started making up their own prompts instead of using the printed ones. That's where the blank wildcards came from, not something I designed from the start, but a response to what players were excited about doing.

Why a Bureau?

Bureaucracy fits because of where the block starts.

Work and school are where playful drawing quietly fades, and where people most wish they had it back. Bureaucracy is work's own language, so using it here matches the problem.

Real bureaucracy compels through fear: grading, firing, judgment.

BSS keeps the shape and drops the fear, since fear was never the point, compliance was. People already know how to obey an official form without thinking. BSS points that reaction somewhere playful.

Reflection

Permission seems contagious. Watching someone go first spreads it, laughter moving through a room before anyone's tried it themselves. I saw it in Mirrored Canvas too.
It's a thread I want to keep pulling on, outside the office scenario. SAM Games, the Seattle Art Museum's in-gallery play prompts, does this: giving adults permission to engage playfully in a space that usually asks for quiet reverence.
BSS proved something real, yet narrow. With the right constraints, people who don't normally draw will draw. It lowers the barrier to starting, it doesn't fix what's underneath. LEGO doesn't just ask if a toy is fun once, it checks if kids come back to it. I haven't tested that. That's the question I want to explore my next series of permission-forward prototypes.