The problem#
Kitchen timers are common tool used by many (most?) people while cooking. They come in many forms, but tend to have the same basic user interface: turn a dial (physical or digital) or type in a time and press a start button, and get a notification (usually some kind of beeping sound) that amount of time later. Very simple concept, your kitchen probably has multiple on different appliances, some of which you might even use.
I've run into a couple ways this design does not quite fit what I want while cooking:
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For shorter measurements where being half a minute off matters, the time I take fumbling with the timer settings starts to feel non-trivial. In practice, I'll often just set the timer for one minute less than I actually want. Alternatively, you could make sure the timer is already programmed, so you just have to hit the start button. But both of these are workarounds for an interface not doing what I want.
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The timer is often just an estimate, and the reaction to the timer is to check on the food and set a new short timer for the next time to check on the food. This may happen multiple times, to the point where I've forgotten exactly how much additional time I've added and there's addiitonal gaps in time between hearing the timer and setting a new timer, so I don't know the actual total of how long something cooked unless I had memorized the time on the clock when it started. Some timers do start counting up after finishing which does help with this somewhat.
The solution#
I have not yet implemented a timer app, just thought about what I think would solve these problems.
The main interface idea I had was that the interface should not restrict the ordering of specifying the settings of a timer and starting a timer. The main entrypoint would be a big "mark time" button that would record a time point that could then be set as part of a new or existing timer as a starting or ending point, or just when an existing timer was extended for some additional time. Additionally, timers and time points should be able to be named, so you could have, for example, a timer named "turkey" and a time point labeled "temperature reduced".
I'm less clear on exactly what this should look like and how the history should be presented. The most important information is the amount of time left on the current timer and its name. And possibly the time since the very start and the time since the last named time point? This will require some experimentation, but since it will likely be used on a display with limited space (either a phone or a tablet that would optimally be visible from across the kitchen), the main display should have as little information as possible so it can be made as legible as possible.