A recent open call on Freelancer.com caught the eye of techies and space rangers from across the globe. NASA has invited the general public to help them create a special “space smartwatch” for astronauts to use on the International Space Station.
According to reports, anyone can enter the contest, but they better be ready to bring the science … at a very high level. Entrants are expected to produce wire frame images detailing what the apps would look like when displaying crew agendas, warnings, communication status, alerts, and timers. Better projects will be easy to read on a small screen as well as “innovative representations of common data.”
The prize, in addition to immortal glory in the annals of NASA, is $1,500. It may not sound like much, but imagine having NASA on your resume before you graduate high school.
At this point, you may be wondering: couldn’t NASA design their own app in, like, an afternoon? Yes, probably. But the design isn’t the point. The contest is. NASA is still smarting from the loss of the shuttle program and the subsequent loss of popularity and communal awe and respect of the general public. They are focusing on guerilla PR like never before…and this is just one of the ideas.
NASA’s Tournament Lab created and marketed the contest. The Lab is a division of the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, which is trying to elicit ideas from the private sector to keep NASA in the news. Driving up social media buzz is not only a necessary evil for PR these days, it is an absolute necessity. Even guys who walked on the moon are not immune.
Expect more of this sort of thing to come out of the NASA technology PR machine in the coming months. After all, astronauts need more than watches. What’s next for NASA? Their own version of Google Glass, perhaps? Well, yes, actually, they are already working on that.