Eight ideas, eight minutes. Write your challenge, press start, and sketch one rough idea per frame before the timer moves on. Speed beats polish: the point is to get past your first obvious idea.
Crazy 8s is a core method of the Design Sprint, created by Jake Knapp at Google. Where it comes from
Add a short caption under each sketch, then save the sheet. Next step: vote for the strongest ideas.
Write one clear challenge. "How might we…" questions work well. Want ideas first? Try SCAMPER before this.
One idea per frame. Stick figures, arrows and boxes are fine. When the frame moves on, so do you.
Give each sketch a few words, save the sheet as an image, and compare it with your team's.
Crazy 8s is one of the core methods of the Design Sprint, a five-day process for answering big product questions through sketching, prototyping and testing with real users. The Design Sprint was created by Jake Knapp at Google, and grew out of Google Ventures' work with startups between 2010 and 2012. It became known worldwide through the 2016 book Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz.
In a sprint, Crazy 8s comes on the sketching day: after everyone has gathered notes and rough ideas, each person folds a sheet of paper into eight panels and sketches eight variations in eight minutes, one minute each. The time pressure is the point. It pushes you past your first, most obvious idea before you settle on one to develop. No single inventor of the exercise itself is on record; it spread through Google's design teams and the sprint, and Google now teaches it in its free Design Sprint Kit.
The timer, sketch pad and sheet export on this page are made by Invent + Discover, adapted so you can run Crazy 8s on a laptop, tablet or phone. Your sketches stay in your browser; nothing is uploaded.