I’ve just picked my top three picks for the £20,000 widget prize so I’d like to share three tips for making a really great mobile widget:

Make sure it’s mobile

Your widget will be used when someone is on the move, so it should match that use-case. If it’s not something people would use while they’re on the move, then it probably won’t make a very good widget.

Make sure it’s very easy to use

Be very careful about requiring the user to navigate with the ‘joystick’. It’s not very easy to click things so think twice before adding a bunch of complexity.

Make sure it’s robust

It’s likely that user’s connection will be flaky, so make sure the app handles connection problems gracefully. You should spend extra time on error messages so it’s easy to understand any potential problems.

Make sure to explain what it does: I can’t tell you how many times I opened up a mobile widget and had no idea what it was supposed to do. Add a bit of help text to the 1st screen the user sees.

Feel free to share any of your tips below. Thanks!