BBC Widget

Create a suite of widgets to delight and inform users, and engage them with the BBC's content in new ways.

Discover
The widget encourages users to discover music by simply clicking a button. Users are able to see the most talked about artists or best-rated albums of the week. It defaults to ‘This week’s most viewed album reviews’, but the user can personalise his/her own widget. ‘Discover’ is for those who want a more laid-back experience and are open to new possibilities.

Listen
Perhaps the most important function of the widget is ‘Listen’. It allows users to choose an artist, genre or tag, and creates a playlist of similar artists, genres and tags. So for instance, if I want to listen to Etta James, the widget looks for other similar artists that have been classified in the same genre or tagged by users. Therefore I can listen to unlimited hours of blues and can tell the widget which songs I like or hate, which is remembered for the next time I use the widget.

Find
“Find” is a powerful search tool. Users can search by typing a keyword into the search box or can specify a lot more, down to the best-rated song in an artist’s album two weeks ago. There are three main search controls: the first is time based (last year to this week), the second is popularity-based (most viewed to best rated), and the third is classificatory-based (albums to tags).

You can follow the thought process on my blog.