The Eye

Google’s Method for Testing New Ideas Includes a “Magic Clock” Invented for a 4-Year-Old

The Time Timer is one of Google Ventures design partner Jake Knapp’s favorite low-tech tools when developing new ideas.

Time Timer

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz is a new book in which the Google Ventures’ design partner shares the step-by-step process behind the “sprint” methodology he created to help companies design new products and services in the space of a workweek. 

They have developed a precision blueprint for how sprints should run, down to details such as start and end times, the precise hour to break for lunch, what and what not to eat for lunch, and non-negotiable rules that include banning screen-based devices from the workroom. Their favorite tools are old-fashioned office supplies like giant white boards; yellow 3-by-5-inch Post-it notes (additional colors slow down decision-making by increasing cognitive load); medium-point Paper Mate Flair felt-tipped pens (rather than thin-tipped, to help concision when writing out ideas); blue ¼-inch dot stickers; and, as he shares in the excerpt below, a nondigital device they describe as a “magic clock” that was invented for a 4-year-old.

“How much longer?” In the fall of 1983, Jan Rogers was hearing this question a dozen times a day in her Cincinnati home. Her 4-year-old daughter, Loran, was unusually curious about time. Jan tried every conceivable answer:

“Until the little hand moves here.”

“Until the alarm dings.”

“Two Sesame Streets.”

No matter what Jan said, little Loran just didn’t get it. So Jan went searching for a better clock. She tried digital clocks and analog clocks. She tried egg timers and alarms. She scoured Cincinnati’s shopping malls for a clock that could make the abstract idea of time clear to a 4-year-old. But none of them worked. “I’m not giving up,” Jan thought. “I’ll invent a clock if I have to.” And that’s what she did.

That evening, Jan sat down at the kitchen table with scissors and a pile of paper and cardboard and started experimenting. “That first prototype was really simple,” Jan recalls. “A red paper plate cut to slide into a white paper plate. It was all manual, so I had to actually move the plates as time elapsed.”

Loran got it. And Jan realized she was onto something. She called her invention the Time Timer. At first, Jan manufactured the timers in her basement, using double-sided tape to hold the pieces together. Slowly but steadily, Jan Rogers turned the Time Timer into an enterprise. Today, Jan is CEO of a multimillion-dollar business, and you can find Time Timers in classrooms around the world, from kindergartens in Amsterdam to Stanford University.

Time Timer in action.

Time Timer

The Time Timer itself is an object of simple beauty. True to Jan’s original design, it has a red disk that moves as time elapses. It makes the abstract passage of time vivid and concrete. When Jake first saw a Time Timer, in his son’s classroom, he fell in love. “Please,” he said to the teacher. “Tell me where to get one of these.” After all, if the timer worked for preschoolers, it should be perfect for CEOs. And it was.

The Time Timer (lower right) being used in a sprint.

Jake Knapp

We use Time Timers in our sprints to mark small chunks of time, anywhere from three minutes to one hour. These tiny deadlines give everyone an added sense of focus and urgency. Now, there are plenty of ways to keep time that don’t require a special device, but the Time Timer is worth the extra cost. Because it’s a large mechanical object, it’s visible to everyone in the room in a way that no phone or iPad app could ever be. And unlike with a traditional clock, no math or memory is required to figure out how much time is remaining. When time is visible, it becomes easy to understand and discuss, and that’s as important for a team of professionals as it was for Jan’s daughter Loran.

See also: How the Wright Brothers Inspired the Way Google Tests New Ideas

Reprinted from the book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz. Copyright 2016 by Simon & Schuster, a part of CBS Corp.