Crazy 8s Reloaded (English Version)

Improvement of the Devising Process of the Design Sprint

During a Design Sprint the part of devising solutions to the identified problems will be done in the afternoon of the first day of the Sprint.

In this stage what we do is inspire ourselves on external topics to those of our own industry and make combinations of different ideas.

According to the book Sprint, in order to generate new ideas of solution we use the exercise “the four step-sketch”, which are the following:

1. Write notes, here you scribble the information that has been gathered during the first day of the Sprint.

2. Ideas, here you will draft your first ideas for solutions.

3. Crazy 8s, the exercise indicates that you must divide a page in eight parts and strive to generate eight variances of the idea that you chose in the previous stage.

In this stage I will stop a little, as per those of us who have previously designed sprints might look at the process as something very simple. But I have noticed that this is not true for everybody. I also consider that this stage is fundamental to rescue new ideas and incorporate them in the original idea. For these reasons, it is necessary to give more guidance and forcing the creative of the participants.

That is why I add a classic stage of devising; SCAMMPER, that matches in the number of letters with the Crazy 8s proposed by Jake Knapp

S.C.A.M.M.P.E.R. is the acronym that stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify, Modify, Put It to some other use, Eliminate and Rearrange.

So in each of the eight squares of our crazy 8´s sheet, we will write each letter of the word SCAMMPER.

How to do the exercise

• Hand out this list of questions to the participants (download here), proposed by Michael Michalko in his book Thinkpak: A Brainstorming Card Deck.
• Ask them to read for 7 minutes the questions, and to choose one question per section.
• Now they will have to draft the answer to each question in each of the eight sections of the sheet.
• They will have one minute for each draft, eight minutes in total.

The original exercise establishes eight minutes, we added seven more, but this doesn´t affect the result, I assure you the ideas will be better reflected. After finishing the exercise, you will have new variations and now you can draft your first solution.

4. Sketch your first solution, here all the members of the team draft their best idea in paper.

I hope this exercise is of good use,

Regards,

Marco Velasco