Constraints can be very useful for releasing creativity. This has been known for a long time in literature, but can it be applied in the ICT/computing classroom? I alluded to the idea, and gave a couple of examples, in the article Constraints can be good for innovation. Here are a couple more ideas.

If teaching programming, set a problem, and place a limit on the number of lines of code that can be written, say 100. If that proves to be too easy, make it 50.

Or apply the ed tech equivalent of a technique known as the lipogram, which is where you write some poetry or prose without using one particular letter. For example, set a spreadsheet task in which a nested if statement is not allowed. (They're pretty ugly anyway, so nobody would miss them!) What will the students use instead?

All of this is designed not to be awkward, but to ensure that students really have to think. A lot of clunky code and ugly spreadsheets (or even documents, come to that) or poorly-designed databases arises in part because students can choose to use as much as they want of any tool in the box. As soon you impose conditions, they can't afford the luxury of using the first thing they think of.

Try it.