Idea Eight
What is an Idea Eight workshop?
This tactic generates a lot of ideas, quickly. Eight 'out there' ideas in eight minutes!
Sometimes, to be truly creative, our brains need structure and rules. By restricting space and time, but letting everyone know that anything goes - this tactic forces ideas out, fast. It’s far less painful than it sounds.
Create a Mind Map beforehand to make running this tactic much easier. This also works well with Prototype Persona. Follow up this tactic by prioritising your ideas with Impact Effort Map.
Idea Eight Miro Template
How to run a Idea Eight workshop
1. Get everyone to take a piece of paper and fold it three times to make a grid of eight rectangles.
Tip: it can be helpful to write the pains and needs in each box from Prototype Persona to help prompt ideas.
2. Make sure everyone understands the problem that you are solving. This can be in the form of a How Might We... question.
3. Have a timer ready and explain that everyone will have one minute per crazy idea (one idea per box). Ideas can be written or drawn.
4. Start the timer and encourage the group to move to the next idea as each minute as it passes. The pace might feel uncomfortable, but that’s the point!
5. At the end of the eight minutes, ask each person to talk through their ideas. Encourage the group to steal each other’s ideas for the next step.
6. Do the exercise again, or ask the group to put their top two or three ideas into the T-Bar Format.
7. Ask each participant to present their final ideas to the group.
Origin: Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky, 2016
Not sure if this is the right approach for your team at the moment? Try a different idea generation workshop. Then, you can try an evaluation tactic to help you ensure you’ve got the right ideas/solutions.
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Idea Eight is one of 54 workshop recipe cards inside the Workshop Tactics card deck.
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