You’ve probably wasted hours this week scrolling through endless analytics panels, dense data dashboards, and ‘immersive’ tech platforms that tell you everything and make you feel absolutely nothing.
The most profound piece of emotional design on the internet today isn’t a sleek Apple product or a billion-dollar VR headset. It’s a janky, ad-padded website that looks like it was built in 2008.
It’s called Whoisinspace.com. Created by Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day and Geoff Barrett, the site does exactly one thing: it tells you who is currently orbiting Earth. No deep-space telemetry. No complex orbital trajectories. Just a list of names, the spacecraft they’re on, and how many days they’ve been up there.
And yet, the moment you load the page, you experience a sudden, violent shift in perspective. You are hit with the emotional jolt of realizing that right now, as you sit in your office chair complaining about a slow Wi-Fi connection, a handful of human beings are suspended in the terrifying void of space.
But here is the twist: the site is objectively terrible by modern UI/UX standards. It is cluttered with pop-up ads. Commenters rightfully complain that it’s almost unusable without closing out ‘advertisements upon advertisements.’ There’s even a Magic 8-ball gimmick thrown in for good measure.
And that is exactly why it works.
This profound meaning—human life suspended above our planet—is delivered through a playful, chaotic, commercial web toy. It juxtaposes childlike curiosity with the grimy reality of the modern internet. By refusing to be a sterile, data-heavy platform, it accidentally achieves what NASA’s multi-million-dollar dashboards cannot: it makes space feel intimate.
We don’t need more data. We need more moments of terrifying, beautiful scale.
Big tech companies are obsessed with building ‘metaverses’ and immersive digital worlds to connect us. They pour billions into hyper-realistic graphics and complex algorithms. Meanwhile, this tiny web tool outperforms all of them by commodifying awe. It takes the infinite darkness of the cosmos and shrinks it down to a name you can read on a screen. Lai Ka-Ying. Raja Chari. Kjell Lindgren. Suddenly, the abstract becomes violently personal.
It is a perspective-shifting artifact disguised as a cheap web toy. You look at the screen, and the unspoken tension grabs you by the throat: I am here, they are there, and we are all in space together.
Modern product designers should take note. You do not create emotional resonance by adding more features. You create it by asking one meaningful question—Who is in space?—and then getting out of your own way.
While tech giants spend billions trying to build digital worlds to connect us, a tiny web tool just looked up at the stars and said: ‘There are seven of us up there right now. Don’t you want to know their names?’
Close your analytics tab. Stop scrolling. Look up.
FAQ
Q: But the site is covered in pop-up ads. Doesn't that ruin the profound experience?
A: Ironically, no. The janky, ad-padded reality of the site grounds the cosmic scale of the subject matter. It juxtaposes the mundane reality of our internet experience with the absolute majesty of humans orbiting Earth, making the awe feel earned rather than manufactured.
Q: What can serious product designers actually learn from a Magic 8-ball web toy?
A: Stop trying to build exhaustive dashboards. This site succeeds because it asks one deeply meaningful question and gets out of the way. If you want user engagement, prioritize a single emotional jolt over comprehensive data dumps.
Q: Is this really good design, or are we just romanticizing early-internet nostalgia?
A: It's anti-design, and that's the point. By stripping away the polished, sterile UX standards of modern tech, the raw data feels more authentic and intimate. It proves that emotional resonance trumps aesthetic perfection every single time.