UX Analysis and Review of Widgets

 at Opera Software India - Chandigarh

Along with the end user, a good community of users in opera are also widget developers.The developer community needs to be given tools which enhance their efficiency and simplify widget production. A few widgets like this were:

Widgetize widget:
This widget allowed creation of widgets out of web snippets. The widget made widget creation easy for anyone who didnt have the know-how of coding.

Widget Emulator:
This was an emulator in the form of a widget that allowed other widget platforms( mobile, PDA, TV etc.) to be emulated on the desktop.The widget allowed adding plugins and devices to emulate different platforms.

Process

As an UX expert I was given the task of reviewing these widgets, and suggest changes for their next release.

Widgetize:
For the widgetize widget, after initial analysis, a change in the OOBE was suggested to help users learn the way of using the widget.

Widget Emulator:
In case of the widget emulator the inclusion of File I/O capability to the widget drastically changed the way in which users interacted with the widget. A detailed analysis and discussion was done to understand the core structure of the emulator was undertaken. Based on the discussions certain changes were included while rest documented for future releases. One of the major change was the seperation of Devices, Plugins and infopanel as independent views in the interface. Understanding the developers as users was a challenge in this case.

Product

While widgetize widget was considered for future inclusion, widget emulator is available live here.