The $20 kitchen timer that made it to space

This is a first of a series of regular emails I started sending out to my design team at Inviqa to help spark curiosity. I’ll keep posting them as they go out in my Medium publication Hello Team.

Hello team,

A few weeks ago I was watching a video from a recent rocket launch, taking astronauts to the International Space Station.

They showed the inside of the astronauts’ capsule, and I spotted something surprising. There was something that looked like a kitchen timer strapped on their dashboard.

I asked a friend who’s a space geek, and to my surprise he said I was right. In fact, NASA has been using these $20 kitchen timers for years, including on the Space Shuttle.

(Don’t believe me? Here’s another photo my friend showed me).

Turns out it’s used by astronauts to time different tasks they need to do while they fly.

I must admit this surprised me. After all, NASA must have enough smart people to engineer a timer built especially for spaceflight.

But NASA’s vision is to “reach for new heights and reveal the unknown for the benefit of humankind” — not to build kitchen timers.

And if there’s a timer that thousands people use every day in their kitchen, astronauts should be able to use it too.

What does this mean for you?

Well, when you’re deep into a project and have a million problems to solve, not all problems are equal.

Even when your client thinks their business is “unique”, a lot of it isn’t.

Someone out there will have solved similar problems, and you can learn from what they’ve done. (Hint: it’s probably not who your client things are their “competitors”)

Save the bulk of your effort for the problems that will have the biggest impact, and beg, borrow or steal solutions for the rest.

If it worked for NASA, it’ll work for you.

Happy Monday!

Alex

Kudos to Ian Harris from Agency Hackers that introduced me to his email storytelling approach.