Crazy Eights

Facilitating ideation in human-centred design projects can be challenging, but the Crazy 8s activity is a valuable tool that can help generate innovative ideas. This activity encourages team members to think creatively and quickly, generating many ideas quickly. 

1. Define the problem:  Ensure that everyone has a shared understanding of the problem statement and the challenge at hand. This will help team members focus their ideation efforts and generate relevant ideas.
2. Explain the activity: Each person has 8 minutes to generate 8 different ideas. Encourage everyone to be creative and not worry about the quality at this stage. Emphasise that the goal is to use the time pressure and prompts to iterate their initial idea in 8 different directions.
3. Generate ideas: Provide team members with the necessary materials, such as paper, pens, and a timer. You can also use online tools to facilitate the activity remotely. Encourage team members to work individually, giving everyone an equal opportunity to generate their own ideas. Remind them to suspend judgment and to let their imaginations run wild. 

Ask the group various questions to stimulate divergent thinking. Here are some examples:

Substitute – What place, time, materials or people could be substituted to make your idea different?

Combine – What might you merge with your idea to make it different?

Adapt – What can you adapt in the problem, product or process to make your idea different?

Modify – What might you magnify, exaggerate or overstate? What might you reduce, shrink or hide to iterate your idea?

Put to another use – What else might your idea be useful for?

Eliminate – What (rules, materials, people, process, time, power or relationships) might be eliminated or removed from your idea to make it different?

Rearrange – What could you reverse or reorganise to iterate your idea?

1. Discuss and refine: Facilitate a discussion to review the ideas generated. Encourage team members to share their thoughts and build on each other’s ideas. This can lead to new insights and a deeper understanding of the problem. Identify the key concepts that emerged and discuss why they are valuable. Then, work together to refine and prioritise these next steps.
2. Prototype and test: Use the key ideas identified as a starting point for prototyping and testing potential solutions to the problem. Develop prototypes that embody the essence of the key concepts and test them with users. Iterate on the ideas until a desirable, feasible, viable solution is identified. 

By following this process, you can unlock your team’s creative potential and generate solutions that have the potential genuinely meet the needs of your users.

To find out more about how to up skill your leaders in leading collaborative design or for support with your next codesign project, reach out to us via info@soji.com.au.

Photo by Med Badr Chemmaoui on Unsplash