Crazy 8: creative brainstorming and design sprints

Crazy 8, a fast and effective creativity workshop

Are you launching a new project, and wanting to run an effective brainstorming workshop quickly? Then, the Crazy 8 brainstorming workshop is just what you’re looking for! It will help you generate as many creative ideas as possible in just 8 minutes. Sharing your ideas and discussing them as a team will help you produce an clear and relevant action plan. And then, you just have to distribute the tasks to bring your craziest ideas to life!

Crazy 8 works in 2 stages:

• First, launch individual timed brainstorming sessions;
• Then, hold a joint presentation and debriefing. 

Eight minutes, eight predetermined topics: during the brainstorming session, everyone sends their ideas quick as a flash using text, images, web links or drawings. The team then shares the fruits of collective thinking to delve deeper.

At the end of the workshop, you easily identify the actions to be taken and end up with an action plan. With this creativity workshop commonly used in design thinking, combine brainstorming with creativity, and generate new ideas and solutions to your strategic problems!

Why use Crazy 8 for your brainstorming workshops?

Crazy 8 is a design thinking method and one of many group creativity techniques. It is also sometimes called a divergent thinking workshop, and it lets every participant express themselves and give their own point of view. This method is useful whenever you need to generate new ideas. For example, to create a new product or service, produce a new feature or website page, or solve a specific problem in your organization.

Setting a time limit on brainstorming has 2 key benefits:

• On the one hand, it forces you come up with quick and substantial ideas, without instantly thinking about their feasibility. By being 100% focused on generating ideas quickly, participants avoid self-censorship and you get more ideas from everyone.
• On the other hand, the time limit also forces participants to get straight to the point, to focus on the topics discussed without thinking about anything else. You increase your chances of getting new and unusual ideas.

What's more, this fun creativity workshop encourages a positive and creative competitive spirit within the team, and strengthens the group’s ties.

Finally, thanks to the flexibility of Klaxoon’s online whiteboard, you can provide this workshop for all your teams, whether they’re meeting together in person or some are working remotely. Over to you!

How to run a Crazy 8 workshop with Klaxoon

First, fill in the date and topic of the workshop, and then invite your team to join a Live videoconference on your Board.

Warm up

The Crazy 8 template comes with a short ice-breaker to warm up together and unleash the team’s creativity. Start a one-minute timer and ask everyone to send 3 ideas in response to 3 questions. For example:

• What is your dream destination? 
• Who would you take with you? 
• What item would you take with you? 

The goal is to train everyone to come up with ideas within a time limit. Of course, be sure to spend a few minutes comparing the answers and having fun with the diverse range of suggestions.

Individual brainstorming: 8 topics, 8 minutes

Now it's time for the real brainstorming! Introduce your team to the 8 thought-provoking topics predetermined for this session. You can adapt the Personal area by copying the tables if there are more than 4 participants. 

Then, ask each participant to place themselves in a table, and send an idea with their photo in their chosen color. You’re all set! Start a 40-second timer and ask everyone to send all their ideas for the first topic. This can be in the form of text, drawings, photos, web links, etc. 

Once the ideas are shared for topic 1, pause for 20 seconds, so everyone can move on to the second topic, and get ready. Restart the timer for 40 seconds for this topic, and carry on like this until the last one.

Group debriefing

That's it, the 8 minutes are up, and you can move on to the group debriefing phase. 

Everyone has to copy or move their ideas for to each topic to the table in the Shared area. Choose a time limit together, so that everyone presents their thoughts on each topic quickly. If you need to clarify a suggestion or look at it in more detail, be sure to ask a question using the Question tool. For example, use a wordcloud to expand on an idea, or a vote to reach a decision. 

Then, ask everyone to like the most relevant ideas to them. At the end of the debrief phase for each topic, place the ideas the group wants to keep in the area for selected ideas of the Action plan. Do this for each topic, and if you need to see things more clearly in the shared table, switch to List view to sort your favorite ideas.

All you have to do now is suggest actions in response to the saved ideas, and using Dimensions and Colors, assign them to a team members by deciding on a completion date. And there you have it: you've run a quick and constructive brainstorming session!