Guide
How to run Crazy 8s remotely
Crazy 8s is a sketching exercise from the design sprint: divide a sheet of paper into eight panels and sketch one variation of an idea per minute for eight minutes. To run it remotely, have everyone use paper at their own desk, run one shared timer, keep the call silent, and do not make people present the results. AppSprint calls the step Eight Quick Ideas: eight one-minute private rounds where you can draw, write or upload a photo of paper.
What Crazy 8s is for
Crazy 8s is the third part of the four-step sketch in the book Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz: notes, rough ideas, Crazy 8s, then a detailed solution sketch. It pushes each person past their first idea. One minute per panel leaves no time to polish, so you produce variations: the same idea with a different layout, first step or headline.
Drawing skill does not matter, and in the book the sheet is private. Nobody presents their eight panels; each person uses them to choose what goes into their solution sketch.
Run it step by step
Warm up first (20 to 30 minutes)
Give people quiet time to review the problem, take notes and jot down rough ideas, so they arrive with something to vary.
Prepare eight panels (1 minute)
Fold a sheet of paper in half three times, or draw a grid of two rows by four. Use a dark pen.
Explain the rules (2 minutes)
One panel per minute. Take your strongest idea and sketch a variation in each panel. Words, boxes and arrows are fine. No talking, and nobody has to show their sheet.
Run eight one-minute rounds (8 minutes)
The facilitator runs the timer and calls each round. Move on even when a panel is unfinished.
Choose what to keep (3 minutes)
Each person circles the one or two panels worth developing, still in silence.
Develop the best idea (30 minutes or more)
Turn the chosen panel into a solution sketch or prototype that someone else can understand without an explanation.
Common mistakes
- Asking for eight unrelated ideas. Variations on a strong idea are easier and more useful.
- Stopping the clock when people groan. The later rounds are uncomfortable, and that is where less obvious ideas tend to appear.
- Making everyone present their sheet. People start drawing for the audience.
- Voting on the panels. Vote on the developed sketches or prototypes that come next.
What changes on a video call
Paper still beats a mouse. Drawing with a trackpad breaks the one-minute rhythm, so ask people to sketch on paper and photograph the sheet only if they need it later. Anyone who cannot draw comfortably can write a sentence per panel.
Use one timer everyone can hear, mute microphones and make cameras optional. Avoid a shared board where people watch each other's panels fill up, because that brings back the comparison the silence was meant to remove.
Doing this in AppSprint
AppSprint calls this step Eight Quick Ideas. It appears in the Full Product Sprint and the Focused Product Sprint, after Private Notes and Rough Ideas, which mirrors the four-step sketch. There are eight panels, and the host starts each 60-second round. The canvas offers Draw, Write and Upload paper, plus AI image generation, so you can write instead of draw or photograph a paper sketch.
The step is strictly private. Your panels are stored only in your browser, are never shared with the team and are left out of AI synthesis and the session summary. AI teammates take no part in it. The next step is Prototype, where each person describes their idea and the AI builder returns a working prototype that the team reviews without names.
If you want a wall of everyone's panels to discuss, use a shared board; AppSprint does not show them. The One-Hour Sprint skips this step.