 Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining this webinar. I'm Philip Hagan. I'm a head of product at Holland & Barrett, and I'm currently focused on building some exciting new digital health and wellbeing experiences. I've been in product management since 2014 in various guises, some of them more agile than others, and I've worked in retail, financial services, travel, fashion, and now health and wellness, working from colleague tools, platforms, apps, microservices to websites. And today I'd like to talk to you about Crazy8s, which is definitely my go-to discovery technique whenever I've got a tricky problem. And hopefully after today you've got a good view of what is Crazy8s, why would you use Crazy8s, and how would you run your own? And hopefully you can avoid some of our common mistakes. I've enlisted some feedback from some great people throughout that I've worked with. So hopefully you'll know it's not just my opinion of one, but you'll see that there's some benefits wider. So what is Crazy8s? Well, Crazy8s is a great ideation technique when you're looking to bring some energy and spark to your discovery process. In Crazy8s you've got to generate eight ideas in eight minutes, and this helps you output lots of ideas in a really short period of time. So with just a group of five of you, that's 40 ideas in eight minutes. And I'm not sure there's another technique that can output a volume of ideas like that. I remember the first time I learned about Crazy8s was when I was early in my product career, and I was working at a company called Argos, and we got mined the product in to do training with us. And the trainer said to us, if you've got a wicked problem, have you ever tried Crazy8s as your way to get out of it? And being new to product, I sold on the name and concept. It was so much more energetic and out there and interesting than the corporate requirements gathering sessions that I'd been in prior to that. And I had to know more, I had to give it a try. That early excitement that I felt is such a common reaction for people when they encounter Crazy8s. Even if it's for the umpteenth time, it's something that makes it so special in my opinion. So where did Crazy8s come from? Well, Crazy8s was invented by Jake Knapp as part of the Google's famous design sprints, which are also a brilliant discovery technique. But what I found over the years is Crazy8s works really well in and off themselves. They don't need to be in a design sprint, and they don't always need to be design focused. Naturally, I encourage people to try and make it design based and to sketch their ideas or their thoughts. But I've had engineers just write down ideas in a list or and I've had teams tackle conceptual problems like how could we better inspire customers or how do we imbue loyalty or how can we improve our brand saliency? These are also great for Crazy8s sessions. So here's your basic how to and don't worry, I've got a checklist later on, so you don't need to write it all down. But when you're running your first Crazy8s session, what you want to do is ask people to have some pen and paper ready. Although I've seen some really cool digital solutions like Mirror and Figma. So personally, I like the paper and pen element. But feel free to give people digital solutions. Once they've got their pen and paper, they divide it into eight sections. And then you want to give them some context. So like what are they looking at on why? What insights do we have? Do we have some competitive visuals to share and then give people a really clear brief? Such as how do we encourage customers to add to bag on a product page? Or what's a better way of helping customers find the right product for them in the quickest amount of time on a list of page? You give them that clear brief and then you set a timer for eight minutes and go. When the eight minutes are up, it's time to showcase the ideas, spend time walking through each design and encouraging people to share what each idea means to them. And what they were thinking through when they created that. And then what you do once you've gone through all the ideas, you do some dot voting. And then you get a real good view of which ideas inspired people the most and which do they think help best help you solve that problem. Now at the end of this, hopefully you, the product manager, have got a raft of key ideas to explore, prioritize, refine. And you might want to do a crazy eight, which some of the teams that I've seen have done this to great effect. Do a crazy eight off the crazy eights using those ideas as inspiration for your next round. But do be careful of an endless loop where you never stop crazy eighting. So now that you know the how to, hopefully I can help you with the why. So why would you use crazy eights? Well, as we've established, it's eight ideas in eight minutes. And this helps capture real inspiration as people aren't able to spend time agonizing thinking things. It really helps quiet and that inner critic that says like, that's a bad idea, or that you don't put that. And this was backed up when I asked Cecilia for her thoughts. And Cecilia is a bit of a veteran of crazy eights having used it in previous roles at cancer research, tick track, and Holland and Barrett. And she told me the fact it forced you not to overthink was one of the best benefits for her. Generally, the first idea that someone has is the least innovative and inspirational. And so crazy eights really helps push the boundaries and get people to think creatively. But I wanted to dig into why is that first idea the worst? And so I wanted to share with you and Julian Shapiro's theory of the creativity force it or tap if you're British watching this. And so in his blog, Julian Shapiro writes about noticing that in a documentary about Ed Sheeran's songwriting process, he was using the exact same process that Neil Gaiman was using in his masterclass, who's a world famous author. And what this was was visualizing their creativity as a back type of water. And the first mile was just filled with wastewater. And in order to get to the good clear water, you needed to flush out all the wastewater. So applying this to creativity at the beginning of a writing session, what both Neil Gaiman and Ed Sheeran do is they just write every bad idea that reflects reflexively comes to their mind. And instead of resisting these, they just let them flow. And then once the bad ideas are emptied, the strong ideas come through. Now Shapiro believes that the reason for this is once you've generated enough bad output, your mind starts to identify the patterns of what makes a bad idea a bad idea. And then you can do the inverse to get a good idea. And if I take Shapiro's theory here around the creativity force it or tap, I genuinely believe that crazy eights is the best discovery technique for turning that on and off. And this was backed up when I spoke to Fiona. So Fiona is one of our science leads and health tech experts. And she's only recently been introduced to crazy eights. And her view is, I wish I'd known about this before I wish every startup in the world knew about this. And often startups are run and founded by non product folks. And and she was so astounded by the amount of creativity that it generated that she felt everyone needed to know about this technique. And again, I think this is really true. I think there's very few techniques that I know that can match crazy eights in terms of facilitating creativity. And another key reason why crazy eights is so useful is that it makes your stakeholders part of your product. So Naomi Kaplan, who's a product lead has found that she thought her learnings around converting non product folks to product were driven by the crazy eight exercise because it put the user at the center. It broke down barriers on and across teams by providing an equal playing space for anyone's contribute. And it allowed them the freedoms test things at half bait and weird and help them refine the propositional feature. And I think this is so important to me. So Naomi touches on a couple of key benefits to crazy eights here. One is that freedom to test the weird and wonderful. And I'll share something later on about that. But the points that Naomi makes about being user centric and converting non product folks to product led ways is so poignant to me. I found very few techniques in product that combine stakeholder engagement and customer focus so perfectly. It's impossible not to think about the customer during a crazy eight session. But then equally you're encouraging active participation and collaboration from everyone in the workshop. So my eyes is just a win win, especially if you're trying to encourage product led ways are working. And this is evidence by the fact that I can receive a slap message like this from Cecilia in the morning of a day that includes a crazy eight workshop. Now how often do you get a stakeholder sending you a message saying they're looking forward to one of your meetings later in the day. Crazy eights is truly an exception in this point. And this code design between stakeholders and designers is argued by clear left to be a habit for high performing design teams. They found that involving non designers help build greater empathy for the user across the organization. And I've got to be honest, most crazy eight sessions I've been in designers have been one or two. They're definitely in the minority. And clear left believe that for design to succeed and thrive, it needs to involve non designers intensively. Well, there's nothing more intense than eight ideas in eight minutes. And similar to the creativity force it or tap. I just can't think of any other techniques that are just as well suited than crazy eights to linking stakeholders, customer problems, and your product teams. And one of the reasons for this is because crazy eights is all about the ideas. It's really non political. There's no emphasis given to seniority, skill set or how extrovert or introverted someone is. Instead, it's just a level playing field where the only the ideas are judged in and off themselves. So Ryan is new to being a product manager and he's just started using crazy eights. And he reinforced this view that the focus was on ideas. And that was the biggest benefit to crazy eights because he said seeing people realize their ideas are valued, important and have the potential of being something that ends up in production, no matter their role. And I think as product managers, we've all been excited to see our products and features ship. We've all been had that moment where we've been involved and we've seen it from ideation through to delivery and crazy eights opens the doors for others to get that proud product feeling. It opens the door for your stakeholders to input and feel like I was there when we thought of that. I was there. It was my crazy eight that inspired that change or is my crazy eight that did that feature or actually no, I doubt voted on that crazy eight that ended up being built. And when I spoke to Sonia who's a product lead about her experiences with crazy eights, it was a similar story around encouraging team members from all disciplines that the ideas they generate are usually different from a different perspective to yours and as a whole the more perspectives, the better quality of the end product. And I think this is something I found in almost every crazy eight session I've ever run whereby I've always been pleasantly surprised and shocked by how divergent the ideas are and there's so many things that I'd never have thought of if I was left to my own devices. So the process of doing crazy eights really encourages a significant diversity of thought, which is so important for us when building our products. And like I said, it's rare that you won't find something useful. So I think this is the key reason as to why I love crazy eights. So you'll have heard me talk about five people coming up with 40 ideas in eight minutes earlier and thought, so what field like output isn't a key measure. We know it's all about the outcomes and I'd agree with you as a product manager, we're all about outcomes and I've never not been nicely surprised by the crazy eight sessions and the ideas that come out of them. So even if you generate 40 ideas and only a couple end up being useful, I can almost guarantee that your product, your customers will be better off for your thinking and your endeavors through crazy eights. So naturally we've talked about the why and now I'm going to talk about a few hints and tips. So naturally as with any process we've got some hints and tips around how we can make those sessions run more smoothly and here you can learn from my own failures and my own learned lessons along the way. And unsurprisingly timing is everything when it comes to crazy eights. Beth had been using crazy eights with her teams and she quickly learned that she needed to book longer sessions for her crazy eight sessions. She said we probably need twice as long again to discuss everyone's thoughts and now I think we're all suffering from too many meetings these days and particularly in this new mostly remote world. We're seeing lots of people having to try and make meetings more productive by turning them into 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes anything to avoid the 60 minute meeting. But be really careful about stifling your crazy eights with timings that are too tight. Make sure you give them enough room. So here's a few hints from me. Timebox it and timebox each activity as you go to keep it paced. Go asynchronous where you can. So do dot voting or your idea discussion later on in a slack thread or comments on mirror or voting via form. Ultimately don't sweat it. Having run lots of crazy eight sessions, very few have gone exactly how I planned it before. And as long as you get any outcomes you need, don't worry about it. You may end up saying everyone share one idea each or everyone share four ideas each. You might just have to keep tailoring it to the timing. Don't sweat it and then use the timer function so it's never personal. It's never you cutting off someone mid flow. Instead it's the timer. The timer said you had two minutes. Your two minutes is up. Sorry. These are some of the key tips I'd give for keeping on time. Another key point is to give context to the problem space that you're focusing your discovery on. I was speaking to Sarah who's recently been going through crazy eights for the first time as a non product stakeholder. And she was saying she thinks it would be really useful if the day before or in the lead-up you ask people to look at their favorite parts of other apps so that it could help guide them and give them some inspiration. And speaking to Sophie, Sophie was saying similarly she'd found that in the past it was really important to set the scene and spend time setting that scene because she'd found it in the past where she'd been a participant probably in one of my crazy eights and not being too sure in what she was doing. And so giving context is really important. So make sure you spend a lot of time around what's the problem. Make sure everyone's oriented around that problem space. Share any insights you've got particularly metrics or outcomes that you're trying to drive with that work. And if you've got competitors in the space share examples, share this is what their example of this looks like or this is what the rest of the market looks like at the minute. And share prep and the invite. So as you saw from Sarah, she did like a bit of homework. She did like a bit of extra work in the run up to a crazy eight session. So do give people ideas, reading to do ask them to come with their view of what their favorite app is and why or what their favorite X feature is or things like that. Another key pitfall for crazy eights is people feeling self conscious and this can be the designers feeling self conscious because they're like, I'm the arty person in the room. I need world class design here or it could be non designers feeling that their lack of drawing skills is going to show them up. So there's a few things here and Fiona really helped me out on this where she said, make sure you set the scene for psychological safety. So people like her who can't draw photography and those are her words not mine feel more comfortable and not stupid. And then also give explicit permission for the crazy out their ideas. I think both of these things are really important around helping people not feel self conscious. And I promised you an example of some of those out their ideas. And so I wanted to share this example from Tanya and one of our product managers who is clearly an out the box crazy eight specialist or thinking outside the box crazy eight specialist, should I say. So we were doing crazy eights around a women's health app that we were creating and Tanya came up with this concept of a vulva based navigation. And the idea itself didn't go through to customer testing or any high probability prototypes. But it gave the whole design week a new impetus. It gave the whole team this fresh perspective of thinking outside the box and being OK to go out there with the wacky ideas. And it's in these spaces that innovation happens. And actually this idea then inspired one of our other teams to look at more different types of navigation based around illnesses and health and well being problems. And those did go through customer testing and high fidelity prototypes. And so Nastia who's one of our very talented design leads she also had a few ideas around how to avoid feeling self conscious. So she was keen to say make sure you remind people not to worry about their idea being too small or stupid. There's no such thing. Encourage people to stick to the rules. So do stick to one minute per sketch. I've often seen people do five sketches in the eight minutes or spend the eight minutes on two really high fidelity sketches. And really is the eight ideas in eight minutes that you want to encourage people to stick to. And also Nastia said don't worry if your image needs an explanation to be understood. And last but not least and this is really important don't feel it needs to be original. You can copy things that you've seen elsewhere or just redrawing what you saw on a competitor's app or website. Don't don't feel everything needs to be original. And Ozzie who's a product leader that I was fortunate enough to work with. When I was asking her her thoughts she said the same. Make sure there's no wrong idea. When we're running crazy eights we're in divergent thinking mode. So go for quantity not quality. Build on each other's ideas there's no right or wrongs we want as many as possible. So going back to that output outcome metric. Let's just start off focused on output and the outcomes will come through this process. And Ryan gave me a little bit of advice on how to help people get over the self-consciousness which is just show your previous shitty drawing skills at the beginning. It can do a lot for showing that it's not about hi-fi designs. And I'm not sure if you noticed but that's exactly what I did on the opening slide of this talk. This is one of my crazy eights once upon a time. And I tend to show these sorts of things just so that people can see. Actually I could do that. Anyone could draw a couple of boxes in a smiley face. And this wouldn't be a talk about ideations and people being self-conscious without me sharing my go-to meme which I do yes I have a go-to meme for workshops. Any time I put in a crazy eights workshop I will include this meme. Someone once said in a meeting let's make a film with the tornado full of sharks. This meme alone just sets that scene that people can have crazy out their ideas, can feel safe and there's no good ideas or bad ideas. And so a few hints and tips around feeling self-conscious. Show your sketches like I said. Show them that you're drawing in stickmen as well. And if you're really good at unless you're a top artist that is. And if you are a top artist just do the stickmen so that they feel better. Give permission for the wacky to set the scene out of the box ideas are welcome. Focus on the ideas it's not just about the pictures and reassure throughout keeping reassuring in the meeting invite all the way through when you're sharing. Thank people for their ideas. Thank people for contributing and don't judge the ideas. Just comment in terms of like oh could you explain why you thought that or could you tell us how this would work. Never critique in those moments that people are talking through. Give it energy. So I have done a power of fun talk from with the product school before so you can watch that in terms of getting energy. But I think one of the key things that came from Sophie when I was talking through this which was the best way to do a crazy session is to be enthusiastic and try to make it fun. I think people are more likely to enjoy and put effort in if you're happy. And so adding music so it's not silent when they're drawing is a really good example of that. So yeah give it energy. Music is always really important. Silences aren't always golden. As the host if you're running the crazy eight is your job to bring the energy. This is a meeting that shouldn't feel like a meeting so make sure you do that. Publish and share your outcomes. Generate a buzz around the crazy eight share your findings share the things that you learn the things that you're taking through to production and keep it informal. Stay chill throughout. If people don't want to follow the rules that's fine. Don't be a stickler going you must do eight designs in eight eight minutes. Try and keep that the mantra try and keep that the thing that people do. But don't go into teacher mode of telling people often stuff. Keep it a nice chilled informal session. Make sure you review the ideas. So as we saw from Beth before there wasn't enough time to go through the ideas and that's such an important part of crazy eights. If you've just got the sketching. And not the review of the ideas you're missing a key step. And so if you added a little bit of advice when I was asking her about it which was. Make notes when people are explaining their drawings because this will help you piece it together afterwards rather than just when you're looking at them after the workshop. And so here's a couple of examples of some of the ones of my teams where. As you can see from the the notes versus the versus the diagrams themselves without the notes for example I wouldn't know that this one here is a loyalty link. But now reflecting back I'm like oh yes that's what that meant. And similarly here with Eugene's when when I say no it doesn't have to be anything over the top it just needs to be the thing that they said they were doing. And so if you hence here is right up the notes as you go summarise the key concepts and ideas that they have. Make sure you ask clarifying questions to build a greater insight into the idea. Time box this bit because this bit you often don't time box. Eight ideas in eight minutes brilliant time box after that. Less time box and try and make sure you do to keep it sharp and snappy. And if you're tight on time make sure you let everyone share a few ideas. It's better to get two or three ideas per person than just eight ideas from a couple of people. And so here's a little cheat sheet that I've made to help you and your teams with running crazy eights. Please do let me know if you give it a go I'd love to hear if you've got any of your own thoughts any of your own hints and tips any of your own findings. I've obviously been quite bullish here saying that I think crazy eights is the best way to activate the creativity you tap. Or it's the best way to buy stakeholders into your product. Please do let me know if you think you've got an alternative discovery technique that rivals crazy eights. I'd love to hear from you. And last but not least I'd just like to say thank you to all of the team who shared their expertise with me and to everyone who's helped me with crazy eight sessions over the years. I've been in so many crazy eight sessions and they've all been brilliant and fun and inspired me and given me some good ammo for this talk. So thank you. Please do get in touch and thank you product school for having me.