UX Case Study 01. RECESS

Our brief was "Creative Care or Ceremony." Rather than relying on one method, we triangulated across three, comparing what people said against what they actually did.

• Past + Make Guided inner-child mapping sessions with three participants — mapping what sat close to self (love, safety, friendship) against what got pushed to the edges (fear, shame, unmet needs).
• Future + Say Four in-depth interviews using open-ended, imaginative prompts across four themes: barriers & permission, childhood & sensory memory, imagined futures, and ceremony & ritual.
• Present + Do Three live observations — unstructured child play, adults moving through the same physical space, and adults with informal social permission (a group sharing wine in a park).

The observation that reshaped everything: three boys playing with sticks dropped them within seconds of each other, with no word exchanged. Hours later, adults walked past that exact same patch of dirt without a glance — same space, same freedom available, completely different outcome. Something in the person, not the environment, had changed.

Adults haven't lost their inner child — it's been buried under external forces, eager to be dug out.

• Permission, not capacityAdults don't lack the desire to play — they lack permission to be seen playing. Fear of judgment is the barrier, not a lack of want.
• Play as portalPeople rarely set out to "play." They set out to do something — and play emerges as a byproduct.
• Connection beneath languageThe most meaningful connective moments we observed involved no words at all.
• Grief, not forgettingAdults don't forget how to play. They mourn it — quietly, specifically, and often without realising.

We initially proposed a monthly care package — a kind of at-home art therapy. User testing quickly surfaced a contradiction: asking someone to opt into another task, however playful, reintroduced the exact friction our research showed was the real barrier. A care package required initiative; our insight demanded something that removed that requirement entirely.

From there, prototyping and usability testing surfaced three specific breakdowns: our Figma flow was confusing at points, the ceremony lacked a clear ending, and our permission slip wording read as an order rather than an invitation.

The final prototype: Recess is a roaming, life-sized crayon object that dispenses permission slips for small acts of adult play. Tested with real users in a public spatial context, it produced observed, unprompted moments of unselfconsciousness — the outcome the brief demanded.

1. Approach the object in public space
2. Touch the embedded screen
3. Answer two reflective, slightly absurd questions
4. Receive a personalised permission slip
5. Do the activity — now, or later
6. Colour the back and stick it to the object for the next person to find