WIDGaT – widget design authoring
Yesterday Phil and I attended a session at the HEA in York about the WIDGaT tool; it’s a web-based application which lets anyone create ‘widgets’ and share them in a variety of ways.
A widget is a small programme or app which can be viewed and used across multiple platforms and devices such as desktops, smartphones, iPhones, tablets etc. Below are a few examples of widgets which have been created using the tool.
My overall impression by the end of the day was that the WIDGaT tool seems to be a good idea, but it hasn’t matured. Philosophically, it is embracing open source development and encouraging a community of practitioners. The developers have organised coding bashes to get user feedback and they have organised roadshow events to share the development so far with the community. They seem to be doing everything right, but the WIDGaT tool just doesn’t cut it at the moment.
The idea was to create a tool which would allow people with little to no programming experience, to create a widget. This could be for their own personal purposes (time management for example), or as a teaching resource. The tool does allow people to do this, but it has so many limitations that creating what I would consider to be a useful widget, is beyond its capabilities at the moment.
I was also left wondering why anyone would use this tool when there are so many professionally developed apps already available across a range of platforms and so many features within systems such as VLE’s which do similar things, but better. I’d be happy for someone to enlighten me, though from conversations with other delegates, I know I am not the only one!
