Ready, Set, Go: 8 Ideas in 8 Minutes – Crazy 8s

Crazy 8s are a simple sketching exercise.

English edition — originally published in German as Auf die Plätze, fertig, los: 8 Ideen in 8 Minuten – Crazy 8s.

How They Work

Crazy 8s are a simple sketching exercise: Everyone folds a blank A4 sheet of paper three times in half, creating eight fields. Then the 8 "crazy" minutes begin: Everyone uses a thick black Sharpie to draw one idea in each of the eight fields. However, there is only one minute available for each sketch. I play nervous music and sporadically announce the remaining seconds for a sketch, which – quite intentionally – increases the stress for the team.

Good Reasons for Crazy 8s

The time pressure, the limited space, and the requirement to sketch instead of write force the team to think visually and concentrate on the essence of an idea. There is a subtle but important difference between "What explains my idea?" and "How do I explain my idea?". The focus on the essential, the "what," helps both in ideation sessions and subsequently for the Final Sketch.

The limited time available per sketch forces all participants to switch into a new working mode: We always look for quantity over quality when it comes to ideas. The chances are better that one of eight quick ideas will be excellent than if there is only one idea that has been pondered over for a long time.

A third aspect seems important to me: I often find my Design Sprint teams to be overly intellectual. They prefer to talk for minutes about an idea, including all (mostly irrelevant) details, possibilities, opportunities, risks, and USPs. During Crazy 8s, there's no time for great intellectual feats; participants start thinking with the pen and soon see what comes out.

Last but not least, Crazy 8s are an ideal warm-up exercise for the final sketch: participants see that they don't have to be afraid. For Crazy 8s, you don't need to be able to draw, nor can you do anything wrong.

The Ideal Time

Crazy 8s can be incorporated in different ways: In the Google Design Sprint, they are used as a scribbling exercise for the Final Sketch. In my experience, this works quite well. I also like to extend this by having all participants present their Top-Crazy 1 to the team. This creates the opportunity for these top ideas to inspire the team and influence the Final Sketch.

Crazy 8s are also great as a starting point for an ideation session: After all participants have shared their Top Crazy-1 with the team, each person chooses one of these ideas. They then independently build on the original idea, expand it, concretize it, and draw variations. In a very short time, a large number of different ideas are generated, with different team members having contributed.

When I asked everyone on the team for their "Most Memorable Moment" at the end of a day, one participant said: "Crazy 8s: What stress, and my wrist hurt afterward." That's when I knew: Everything went perfectly!