7 Rules for Real Widgets

At Widgetcon this morning Shervin Pishevar, President of Freewebs, proposed these seven best practices for successful widget development–beyond the metaphors there are some good tidbits:

 

1.  KISS—keep it simple stupid. Don’t over complicate widget. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” quoted from DaVinci Code – rockyou, gizmos, easy to do. Overcomplicate it, you kill it.

2. Bring the bling. People want to personalize. Allow the user to feel like they own it. Bring popular culture in.

3. “Speak Dog”-his way of saying that you need to speak from the voice and language of the community

4. “Eat your own dog food”—can not be inauthentic and successful. Fake, like lonely girl, figured out quickly and disdained.

5. “Color outside the lines”—widgets represent repackaging things that are already out there, so you need to look at changing the form factor, context and content.

6. Be Contagious—ability to connect with someone and get them to do something. If you don’t allow users to do something you lose their viral potential and expectation

7. Be Useful—to be relevant, need to deliver value.