In the same way that advertisers can bring their ads to your personalized home page using widgets, so business applications can bring easily digestible morsels of data and functionality to users.
This idea has enormous advantages:
Users get everything they need from multiple applications on a single Web page. They no longer have to skip around to different applications to get what they need.
Because the applications take up such a small amount of real estate, they can be extremely focused. So, for example, a gadget for an insurance agent can contain a list of clients whose birthdays are today. They don’t have to go to the application that stores that application, do a search, etc. or run a report. When they come in in the morning, the list is there and ready to go.
The applications can be launching pads for other applications - but launched in context. So to continue our birthday example, the user can immediately send an email or make a phone call simply by clicking on the persons name - again without leaving the comfort of their home page. If they have access, they may even see at a glance if the person is online and can simply IM them. Finally, If they want more information about that person, they can click inside the gadget and bring up more information - all inside the same gadget.
While the real estate is small, some clever programming can make maximum use of the space available. On the right is an example of a gadget we created for SAP Employee Profiles. As you can see, there are multiple tabs and multiple segments - and a lot of information in a very small space. So the size of the gadget can have an extremely positive effect by forcing the developer to think more clearly about how to present information in a way that makes sense in the space available. This includes splitting information up into logical sections and adding functionality from a single point of access.
By their nature, gadgets are small enough to fit on mobile devices. No re-engineering needed.
Gadgets can also be used as a way to allow users to build their own functionality. The size factor forces the person designing the function builder to carefully spoon-feed the user - each task to be done needs to be isolated and presented step-by-step, thereby making it difficult for the user to make a mistake, and also eliminating the need for any kind of training or support. You will be hearing a lot more from LimitNone on this subject soon!
Related posts:
- Top 10 benefits of business gadgets
- Going beyond the horseless carriage phase of Web 2.0 applications
- Eric Schmidt talks about nanoapps
- Google Apps API’s - extending enterpise applications with Google functionality
