Handful of Nothing

Everyone likes to makes critics, but it’s even better to see answers. I was very “sarcastic” because it’s my way of saying things, but now I was really happy to see the Widset guys answer. Saying that of course that site was made for laptops / desktop. So yesterday, a brave user like me I read the site and also found the answer that they sent me : http://get.widsets.com. My tip is just make it clear, or when detecting a mobile browser put a link on top (visit the mobile enhanced experience here)

It’s clear why the site was made for laptops : it has a nice ui for managing the Widgets, but I must be very dumb (or I’m acting as regular user, do not reading the manuals) because I suffered a little bit understanding how to really work smart in that ui. My second tip for the developers is also in the managing part : it would be nice to have a very nice, simple 1 page “how it works”. Because when one thing fails, you can miss yourself in the middle.

So I logged in, in the nice ajax log in box, got to the main page. Clicked on library. Nice, I found some of my favorite web services there and picked up “forum nokia” :

Ok, not a problem. It happens. The thing now is : how to solve this problem. I thought the obvious client = my phone. So let’s try again in the phone first? Unm, not.. maybe I can set up this in the configuration:

Unm no luck. Just my data there. Nothing about my phone. No worries. We are exploring =) Wait here it is :

there’s this “reload” button. I really think that there’s something related to the page that I’m .. but as it said about problems.. phone.. let’s click.

Nice. The sms will solve my problems!

5 minutes : no sms. maybe something went wrong. I decided to check again, maybe my number is wrong, maybe that “country” box near the number is not related to the country code, and I need to enter it manually (there’s no format indication on number box so I used the conventional). Fixed the number. Maybe it really needs the +55 code. Maybe not, but who know? let’s try again. clicked reload :

So, no luck for me right? I don’t give up! I follow the instructions and again use my phone to go to the : get.widsets.com. Tried with my N95 : certificate Expired? Hun? What? Certificate? (kidding.. I know what is this certificate, but come one…) Then I tried again, with all permissions set on the phone. Same problem. Damn. Ok, let’s change sim cards and place it on a E61 to see if happens again.

Nice it detects my phone model, begin installation, regular symbian process… downloading…Yeah, I did it. Something I didn’t understand (related to my phones) why the N95 failed with certificate issues, and the E61 was ok… and it was a java application right?

Well.. Open Applications (small icon, instead of default size) opens the Java application.
Much nicer now!

Using widsets finally! Overall : looks quite nice, very nice deep-field effects with the balls, great tooltips, very nice indeed. Now it’s time to browse the widgets and use good ones for my day to day mobile experiences =)

*this was a description of my usage to give a idea of what kind of problems happens. Of course most of this problems is related to the dumbness of the user (in the case me) but sometimes can also help designers find the problems. I did this not only myself, but then tried with a non-designer person at home. Just saying to her : You know those lovely mac widgets you use? What if you have on the phone? go to widsets.com and try it. And I observed her doing almost the same mistakes. The pain was not helping her in the middle =)

Thanks anyways guys for the fast reply. I’m happy to see that you are listening to users, even dumb ones like me.

UPDATE : I tried 2 widgets (flickr, forum nokia, and other simple rss, like the ones I’m already running) and always get this “it’s not supported by your client.” is there a way to solve? New tip: if a problem appears please place a link for “learn how to solve it” that would help a lot.

- Marcelo