What is it?

Crazy 8s is a rapid sketching exercise where every person in the room folds a sheet of paper into eight panels and then sketches one idea per panel, spending just one minute on each. The tight time constraint forces people past their safe first idea and into more creative territory. Nobody is judged on drawing ability. Stick figures and boxes with labels are fine. What matters is getting eight different concepts onto paper in eight minutes. After the sketching round, participants share their best ideas with the group, and the group votes on the most promising ones. The whole thing moves fast, generates volume, and surfaces ideas that would never emerge from a standard discussion.

Also Known As

• Crazy Eights
• 8-Up Sketching

When to Use It

• You need a high volume of ideas in a short time and the group is stuck on a single direction
• A team is deep in a design sprint and needs to explore multiple solutions before converging
• The challenge is visual or spatial in nature (product features, user interfaces, page layouts, service touchpoints)
• You want to involve non-designers in the creative process and level the playing field
• The group has done their research and has context to build on, but hasn't explored enough options yet
• Energy is low and you need a fast, physical activity to shift the room's state
• You want to surface the range of thinking in a team before committing to a single approach

When NOT to Use It

• The problem is not yet defined. Crazy 8s works best when people have something specific to sketch toward. Without a clear challenge, you get eight random doodles instead of eight solutions.
• The group has no context on the topic. People need some background, data, or prior discussion to generate meaningful ideas. Running Crazy 8s cold produces shallow results.
• You need deep, polished proposals. This technique generates rough concepts, not finished designs. If the group expects refined output, they will feel frustrated by the format.
• The challenge is abstract and hard to sketch (policy decisions, relationship dynamics, strategic priorities). Crazy 8s suits problems with visual or tangible outputs.
• People are genuinely unable to sketch at all and the facilitation environment doesn't allow for written notes as an alternative. Some participants freeze under the drawing pressure despite reassurance.
• You only have two or three people. The value of Crazy 8s comes from the diversity of ideas across a group. With fewer than four participants, a structured conversation may produce better results.

Crazy 8s was popularised by Jake Knapp as part of the Google Ventures Design Sprint methodology, first described in his 2016 book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, co-authored with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz. The exercise draws on principles from rapid ideation and design thinking that predate the book, but Knapp's structured format of folding paper into eight panels with one-minute intervals became the standard approach used by product and design teams worldwide.

What You Need

Group size: 3 to 20 people. Works best with 4 to 8 participants. Beyond 12, the sharing round becomes long, so split into smaller groups for presentations.

Time required: 20 to 40 minutes total. 8 minutes for sketching, 10 to 25 minutes for sharing and voting depending on group size. Add 5 minutes for setup and framing.

Space:

• A room with tables or hard surfaces for drawing
• Enough space that people can sketch without feeling observed during the drawing phase
• A wall or flat surface for displaying completed sheets during the sharing round

Materials:

• One sheet of A4 or letter-sized paper per person (plain white, unlined)
• Thick markers or felt-tip pens (one per person; avoid pencils because they encourage erasing)
• A visible timer or countdown projected on screen
• Small dot stickers for voting (3 per person)
• Masking tape or Blu-Tack for displaying sheets on a wall
• A flip chart or whiteboard showing the design challenge or "How might we..." question

The Process

Setup

1. Write the design challenge or "How might we..." question on a flip chart and place it where everyone can see it throughout the exercise. Be specific. "How might we make onboarding faster for new customers?" works better than "Improve onboarding."
2. Distribute one sheet of paper and one marker to each participant.
3. Demonstrate the fold: fold the paper in half three times to create eight equal panels. Unfold. You should have a grid of eight rectangles.
4. Check everyone has a clear surface to draw on.

Step 1: Frame the Challenge

Time: 3 to 5 minutes

Purpose: Make sure everyone understands what they are solving for and remove the fear of drawing.

1. Read the challenge question aloud and leave it visible.
2. Say: "In a moment, you're going to sketch eight different ideas for this challenge. One idea per panel. You'll have exactly one minute per panel, so eight minutes total."
3. Address the drawing anxiety directly: "These are not art. Nobody is going to judge your drawing skills. Stick figures, boxes with labels, arrows, and words are all fine. The only thing that matters is that your sketch communicates an idea. If you can draw a square, a circle, and an arrow, you have everything you need."
4. If the group has never done this before, demonstrate on a flip chart. Draw a quick, ugly sketch of an idea in about 30 seconds. Show that rough is the goal.
5. Say: "Your first idea will probably be the obvious one. That's fine. The magic happens in panels four through eight, where you have to push past the easy answers."

Step 2: Sketch

Time: 8 minutes (strict)

Purpose: Generate eight distinct ideas per person under time pressure that prevents overthinking.

1. Say: "Start with panel one. You have one minute. Go."
2. Start the timer. Call out each minute clearly: "Move to panel two," "Panel three, keep going," and so on.
3. Keep the energy up. At the halfway point, say something like: "Four down, four to go. You're in the interesting territory now."
4. If someone freezes, quietly encourage them: "Just put anything down. A word, a shape, an arrow. It doesn't need to be good."
5. At eight minutes, call time firmly: "Pens down."

Watch for:

• People erasing or trying to perfect a sketch. The marker helps here because you can't erase marker. If someone brought a pencil, swap it for a marker.
• People spending too long on one panel and leaving later panels blank. The minute-by-minute countdown prevents this, but watch for it.
• Talking during the sketching phase. This should be silent, individual work. If people start discussing, redirect them: "Save the conversation for the sharing round. Right now, just sketch."

Step 3: Share

Time: 8 to 15 minutes depending on group size

Purpose: Make all ideas visible and let participants explain their thinking.

1. Have everyone tape their sheets to a wall, side by side.
2. Each person presents their sheet. There are two approaches depending on time:
   • Full share: Each person walks through all eight panels. Allow 1 to 2 minutes per person. Works with groups of 6 or fewer.
   • Highlights share: Each person picks their best 2 to 3 ideas and explains those only. Allow 1 minute per person. Better for larger groups.
3. Say: "Walk us through your ideas. Tell us what we're looking at and why you think it could work."
4. During presentations, the rest of the group listens without critiquing. This is not a feedback round yet.

Watch for:

• People apologising for their drawing. Cut it off early: "No apologies needed. Tell us the idea, not the art."
• Other participants jumping in with opinions. Keep it to "questions for clarity only" during this phase.

Step 4: Vote

Time: 5 minutes

Purpose: Identify the most promising ideas using the collective judgment of the group.

1. Give each person 3 dot stickers.
2. Say: "Look at all the ideas on the wall. Place your dots on the ideas you think are most promising. You can put all three on one idea if you feel strongly, or spread them across three different ideas. Vote silently."
3. Allow 2 to 3 minutes for voting.
4. Once everyone has voted, step back and look at the patterns. Identify the ideas with the most dots.
5. Briefly discuss the top-voted ideas: "What made these stand out? What would we need to explore further?"

Watch for:

• People voting only for their own ideas. The silent voting helps, but if you notice it, you can add a rule: "At least one of your dots must go on someone else's idea."
• Ties. If several ideas get equal votes, that is useful information. You might combine elements from the top ideas or run a quick second vote on just the frontrunners.

Closing

Time: 3 to 5 minutes

1. Photograph the wall of sketches before taking anything down.
2. Summarise the top ideas and what the group will do with them: "We've got three strong directions. The next step is to develop the top-voted idea into a more detailed concept" (or whatever the follow-up process is).
3. Collect all the sheets. They are working artefacts, not throwaway paper.

Facilitator Guidance

What Makes This Work

The one-minute constraint is the engine of Crazy 8s. People's first idea is almost always the most obvious one, the solution they already had in mind before the exercise started. By forcing eight ideas in eight minutes, the technique pushes participants past the familiar and into less-charted territory. The later panels are where the interesting ideas tend to surface because the easy answers have already been used up. The physical act of sketching also changes how people think. Drawing requires making an idea concrete and spatial, which exposes gaps and assumptions that talking about an idea never does. And the individual, silent format means every person in the room contributes equally, including the quiet people who would never fight for airtime in a group discussion.

Common Pitfalls

• Not framing the challenge tightly enough: A vague question like "How can we improve our product?" produces vague sketches. Spend time before the exercise crafting a specific, actionable challenge. The tighter the question, the more useful the ideas.
• Letting people use pencils: Pencils let people erase, which lets them perfectionist their way through the exercise. Thick markers force commitment and speed. This is a deliberate design choice.
• Skipping the warm-up demonstration: If people have never done this before, they need to see what a "good enough" sketch looks like. A 30-second demo on a flip chart removes the mystery and lowers the bar.
• Rushing the sharing round: After the high-energy sketching, it is tempting to speed through the presentations. Resist this. The sharing round is where the value gets unlocked. If time is short, have people share their top two ideas rather than skipping the round.
• Not doing anything with the results: Crazy 8s generates raw material, not finished solutions. If you run the exercise and then move on without developing the top ideas, participants will see it as a pointless warm-up. Always connect it to a clear next step.

Adaptations

• Virtual/remote delivery: Use a digital whiteboard (Miro, Mural, FigJam) with pre-made eight-panel templates. Alternatively, have participants sketch on physical paper at home and photograph their sheets to upload. Digital drawing is slower for most people, so consider extending to 90 seconds per panel. Use the whiteboard's built-in timer and voting features.
• Larger groups (12+): Split into smaller groups of 4 to 6 for the sharing round. Each sub-group presents their top 2 to 3 ideas to the whole group, reducing total presentation time.
• Shorter timeframe: If you only have 15 minutes, reduce to four panels (Crazy 4s) with the same one-minute-per-panel rhythm. You lose volume but keep the time pressure that makes the technique work.
• Non-visual challenges: For problems that are hard to sketch, allow a mix of words, diagrams, and simple flowcharts. Say: "Your panel can be a sketch, a diagram, or a few bullet points with arrows. Whatever communicates the idea."
• Multiple rounds: Run two rounds. In the first round, people sketch individually. In the second round, people pick their favourite idea from round one and sketch eight variations of just that concept. This is useful when you want depth as well as breadth.
• Combined with other techniques: Crazy 8s pairs well with dot voting, 1-2-4-All (share in pairs, then fours, then plenary), or a gallery walk where people circulate and add sticky notes to the ideas they find most interesting.

Real-World Applications

Product team exploring onboarding flows: A SaaS product team used Crazy 8s to sketch eight different first-time user experiences. The winning idea, a single-screen setup wizard, came from a developer who had never participated in a design exercise before. It replaced a five-step onboarding process that had been in place for two years.

Marketing team brainstorming campaign concepts: A marketing director ran Crazy 8s with a cross-functional team to generate ideas for a product launch campaign. The time pressure produced a mix of serious and playful ideas, and the top-voted concept combined elements from three different people's sketches. The final campaign outperformed the previous quarter's launch by a wide margin.

Facilities team redesigning office layout: An operations manager used Crazy 8s with staff to sketch ideal office floor plans after a move. The exercise surfaced needs (quiet zones, standing desks, visible clocks) that months of surveys had missed, because sketching forced people to think spatially rather than answer abstract questions.

Teaching team designing a curriculum module: A group of teachers used Crazy 8s to sketch eight different ways to teach a difficult concept to their students. The exercise produced ideas ranging from physical simulations to card games, and the group selected two approaches to prototype and test in the classroom the following week.

Non-profit exploring fundraising approaches: A charity's leadership team used Crazy 8s to generate ideas for their annual fundraising event. The constraint of eight panels forced them past the "same gala dinner" default and into ideas involving community challenges, digital experiences, and partnership models they had never considered.