Widget: Easy Meal Solutions
Project type: Adobe Air desktop widget
Role: User experience designer, technical lead
Tasks: Research widget conventions, lead project, and write functional / technical specification.
Recipe planner desktop widget developed using Adobe Air.
Overview
Australian Avocados commissioned Liquid Interactive to develop an ‘Easy Meal Solutions’ Widget as part of their digital strategy and complement the Avocados website.
As a useful ‘recipe planner’ desktop-based widget, the Avocados brand would be front-of-mind for users.
Through the highly interactive user interface, users could:
- Get randomised meal ideas,
- Read inspirational quotes,
- Search the website’s extensive recipe database,
- Set meal reminders,
- Set favourite recipes,
- Create, save, edit and rate their own recipes, and
- Submit recipes to the website.
The target demographic for this application was the householder, so the user experience needed to be clear, direct and straightforward.
Process
Our primary development capability was Adobe Flash – so a widget engine / platform that could compile using Actionscript 3 and Flash assets would be the most effective route for development.
I worked with an experienced Flash / Flex developer to research the feasibilities of various platforms and settled on Adobe Air. Air is a platform that can run on both Windows and Mac making the widget available to the maximum number of users without sacrificing aesthetics or functionality.
The widgets pickup was immediate and was supported with a targeted marketing campaign which not only encouraged the existing user base to download the widget, but also brought new click throughs to the site.