How to build a widget

In MBA school you explore a lot of theory and eventually try to apply that to actual practice. But theory comes first in academia, so theorize we did. And when you have to zoom so far out to make such broad brush strokes you need a common business model or product. In our case it was the widget.

In school, widgets could represent anything. Tires, chairs, rubber duckies. And that’s not really fair to the real world with real product nuances. But the worst of it is, that that line of thinking somehow invaded the real world in the form of web widgets.

Web widgets, like in school, can be anything. And they are anything. For example you may be using a widget on your desktop to monitor the weather. Or maybe there’s a widget on your Google home page to display the latest news. Or even a widget that let’s you send a quick burst off to your Twitter followers. All widgets, all doing something completely different.

So the question is, how do you build something like that? Something that can be anything. When the client comes begging for a widget, what do you give them?

Well the first thing you have to decide is what will your widget do. This one’s a biggie, not just because your widget can actually do almost anything, but it’s the foundation of the production process. We can’t build something that can do “anything”.

Here are some questions to get you started:

• Does it pull or push data? In other words is this something that users will use to see what’s going on with your brand or company, or will it be something that users use to send data to you?
• Where will it live? Is this a desktop widget, Windows or Mac? Google home page widget? NetVibes? Mobile? Something people put on their website like a badge? All are built differently, some using different programming languages.
• What’s your delivery method? Are you emailing this, or posting it on your site? Does it need to live on a provider’s site like WordPress or Google? What are the restrictions for those hosts?
• What’s the goal of the widget? To interact with your brand? To help users stay in the loop?
• If the widget is to display information, where is that info coming from and who will manage it? Does this data already exist somewhere? If not will that portion need to be built as well? Will the client manage the information or will that be a service you provide? Did you include that in your estimate?

Obviously those are all starting points. Maybe some you thought about but some you didn’t. Maybe those aren’t even questions you need to be asking with your widget. The end result though should be to narrow down how your widget can be moved from some broad thing to an actual usable piece of the web.

Then when you’re ready to hand it off to some stellar web production company the last step will be smooth and efficient!