There’s a particular creative technique I’ve used over the years to great effect, that I’ve always meant to write about. It doesn’t require any fancy tools or props, or silly games meant to unlock latent cognitive abilities. The only thing The Crazy Take requires is a little bit of insanity.

History

The Crazy Take is a bit of recording studio wisdom passed on to me by a great engineer, who I believe inherited it from his mentor before him, and so on. Think of it as Oblique Strategies for the impatient. Imagine you’re in a recording studio, and after countless takes, you just can’t quite get that perfect vocal. Or perhaps you have plenty of good takes, but they’ve all started to sound the same. The Crazy take is that one last shot, after hours of telling the talent you need just one more, where you throw caution to the wind and do one final, no-holds-barred take. Sometimes they sound absolutely terrible, but more often than not they can reveal little gems of direction that you wouldn’t have otherwise discovered.

Example: Portal Widget

I conducted a design review with some colleagues the other day, where we discussed a new interactive widget for our online student portal. The design was quite good: simple layout, clear typography, easy navigation. We posted our wireframes and screenshots on the wall, grabbed some dry erase markers, and went to work. Ideas flowed freely, and several good improvements came up easily. Then we hit a wall. When something isn’t obviously wrong, or doesn’t provoke an immediate response, new ideas can be elusive.

At this point, I’d usually call it quits. Short meetings are good meetings, and overdesign is the arch-nemesis of elegance. However, sometimes you can tell that not everybody in a room is satisfied. Maybe folks wanted more options, or thought that piece of copy or that new layout could have been a little edgier. Rather than spending time riffing on minor variations or changing arbitrary things, sometimes a little crazy can help. I’ll take crazy over arbitrary any day.

For our little portal widget, a crazy take took less than five minutes. We threw out what we couldn’t or shouldn’t do, what the data specs said, or what the design guidelines required, and just shouted and scribbled anything that sounded fun or cool. The end result look a bit like the Homer Simpson car, but there were two solid ideas (one data, one graphical) that everyone agreed were solid improvements, and worth trying out.

I’ve certainly seen some completely useless crazy takes in my day (sleep deprived, over-caffeinated lead singers can get a little too crazy), but I’m often surprised by how much actually ends up in the final product.

Have you ever had a fruitful Crazy Take? Drop me line and let me know.