My Favorite Ideation Exercise: 6–8–5 Sketching

One of the things I enjoy most about the UX design process is coming up with new ideas and exploring ways to solve the problem at hand. The ideation phase of the d.school’s Design Thinking process can be a lot of fun, and it opens the doors to innovation. So what is 6–8–5 sketching and how does it work?

6–8–5 Sketching is a brainstorming method that helps designers produce numerous ideas within a short time period and should usually be performed early in the Ideation phase. Due to the tight time constraints, it forces designers to let go of their worries about coming up with the “best” idea and leave behind their focus on detailed solutions. The goal is to get creative and come up with as many ideas that solve for a problem as quickly as possible.

d.school Design Thinking Diagram

How do you do that? First things first: gather sheets of paper, a timer, and pens or markers. One thing I’ve found to be helpful is to have your problem statement easily visible to you and your team so it’s easy to remember what exactly you’re trying to solve. Here’s an example of a problem statement from one of my team projects:

Example problem statement for a skill-sharing platform.

Next, divide up the paper into either 6 or 8 sections by folding it into thirds or quadrants. Set the timer for 5 minutes–I’ve found this to be a short enough time to push you to think outside of the box to come up with ideas. Then GO! In each box, draw different ways to solve the problem you outlined. To help get me thinking, I usually frame the challenge in terms of “how might we…..”. The aim is to fill each box with an idea before the time runs out.

Here are some quick sketches I did for a fitness app.

I like to do at least five to six 5-minute rounds of sketching, depending on the project. In my experience, it takes a round or so to get warmed up. After each round my team and I would usually quickly go around and share what we sketched. The beauty of taking a couple minutes to share is that it can spark ideas for others going into the next round. In the span of about 30–40 minutes you and your team can come up with dozens of ideas.

In just over a half-hour, my team and I came up with about 92 sketches for a grocery delivery platform.

It’s important to note that not every idea will be pretty or even a good solution, but the beauty of this process is that elements of ideas that wouldn’t have otherwise been considered can be surprisingly useful in the development of a solution.

At first this may seem difficult because you’re forced to get out of your comfort zone, be ok with making ugly sketches, and come up with a number of ideas that won’t directly work. However, ultimately the ideas that come out of this exercise are likely to be more creative and innovative than if you had sat down for several hours to design the perfect solution right off the bat. Embracing ambiguity and being scrappy are two must-have skills in UX design, and 6–8–5 sketching is a great way to flex those muscles!