I often find these quick exercises which you can use in your workshops. My find for today is the Ideation exercise called Crazy Eights.
For this exercise, you will need:
- A timer
- A4 paper/ post-it notes
- Sharpies
- Circular stickers (or any stickers you may have)
- Flipchart paper/ a whiteboard
- A few brilliant minds (which will be with you in the room.)
Instructions:
- Ask the group to fold the A4 paper into eight blocks. Alternatively, they can draw them, or they can layout eight post-it notes in front of them.
- They get 8 minutes to sketch eight ideas in the blocks. Set the timer.
- When the timer goes off, everyone stops.
- Depending on the time you have, the group can do one of two options. Option 1, go around the group and ask each person to present their top three ideas. Option 2, ask everyone to choose their top three ideas and then give them an added six minutes to iterate on these ideas. Set the timer again. Once the time has ended, ask them to go around and present these new ideas. (preferably putting them up on a whiteboard or flipchart paper).
- Give each person two stickers and ask the group to go up and vote for their favorite ideas out of the collated ideas.
In the end, your goal is to generate as many possible ideas within a short timeframe, taking the selected ideas into the prototyping phase.