Crazy eights
Definition
Crazy eights is a rapid ideation technique — commonly used in design sprints and design thinking workshops — where each participant folds a sheet of paper into eight panels and sketches eight distinct ideas in eight minutes, one per panel, to force rapid divergent thinking.
Crazy eights was popularized by Jake Knapp as part of the Google Ventures Design Sprint process, though the technique predates the sprint format. It addresses a specific problem in group ideation: most people have one or two obvious ideas, and they stop there. Crazy eights forces you past the obvious by requiring eight — and the time constraint prevents overthinking.
How to run it:
- Give each participant one sheet of paper. Each person folds it into eight equal panels (two folds landscape, one fold portrait, or similar).
- Set a timer for 8 minutes.
- Participants sketch one idea in each panel — quickly and silently. Stick figures and rough shapes are fine. This is not an art exercise.
- When the timer goes off, stop.
- Each person shares their eight sketches briefly.
- Dot-vote on the most promising directions to explore further.
The rules that matter:
- Work silently and individually. Group brainstorming creates anchoring and social pressure — crazy eights avoids this.
- One idea per panel. Don't expand an idea across multiple panels.
- Speed over quality. The goal is quantity and diversity of ideas.
- Different ideas, not variations. If all eight panels show the same basic concept with small tweaks, you've missed the point.
Why it works: Ideas 1 and 2 are obvious — you'd have had them anyway. Ideas 3 and 4 require some effort. Ideas 5 through 8 push into territory you wouldn't have explored otherwise. The constraint creates generativity.
After crazy eights: Participants select their best idea and develop it into a more detailed Solution Sketch — a three-panel storyboard showing the user experience. These go up for group review and voting.
Examples
- Design sprint Tuesday: team of 6 each produces 8 sketches in 8 minutes — 48 ideas in total, generating three genuinely distinct approaches nobody had considered
- Product team runs crazy eights to ideate on a new onboarding flow — ideas 6 and 7 spark a conversation about a novel interaction pattern
- Facilitator adds a constraint: 'sketches must be UI-first, not feature-first' — forces participants to think about the experience before the functionality
- Workshop participant protests 'I can't draw' — facilitator reminds them: boxes, circles, and text labels are sufficient
- Remote crazy eights: participants use Miro whiteboards or paper photographed and shared via BoardSnap for the review round
Snap a crazy eights. Ship its actions.
BoardSnap turns any whiteboard — including this one — into a summary and action plan.