NASA is asking developers to design a smartwatch app for use on the International Space Station. The prize is $1,500 and a place in the history of space exploration.

The contest is a partnership between the NASA Tournament Lab and Freelancer.com, which, as well as matching hirers with jobseekers runs design and development contests to solve problems. This challenge is open to anyone with a Freelancer account, which is free to join with your Facebook credentials or and email address, but note that Freelancer deducts a fee from prize money. 

The contest brief explains that NASA is interested in discovering whether smartwatch technology could be helpful to astronauts. This challenge is to design the general user interface for smart watch applications for use on the International Space Station. 

Contestants are asked to use the Samsung Gear 2 as a hardware reference and to submit wireframes highlighting the unique design’s navigation, interaction, layout, look, feel and other important elements of the design.

The Gear 2 runs the Tizen OS and its apps can be written using JavaScript and HTML i.e. they are web apps. This means that any web programmer should have a good grasp of the technology.

The Astronaut Smartwatch App will be used for some of the following applications:

1. Crew Timeline application: Will display an agenda view of the timeline as well as a way to easily navigate to another day in the past or future.
   
   
2. Caution & Warnings application: Will display color coded cautions and warnings.
   
   
3. Communication Status application: Will display whether or not the vehicle is currently able to communicate with the ground through either voice or video.
   
   
4. Timers application: Will be able to set timers for procedures or until the next activity. This general design should direct attention to the appropriate information for a task and increase efficiency.

NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation has provided examples to help devs know what is required and answers to questions on the message board clarify important points.

The deadline for the constest is September 12th and you can view  the status of current entries on the contest page.

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