Developer Experience, API design and craft skills

We define Developer Experience as applying the tools and techniques of User Experience professionals to the design of artefacts for developers. What does that mean for you? What changes if you start thinking about and testing the usability of the APIs you design and build? In this talk I’ll explain how thinking about Developer Experience as a craft skill (something honed through iteration, heuristics and the transmission of tacit knowledge) should affect your day job.

This was the keynote at PHP Northwest 2012 in Manchester.

Transcript

1. DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE, API DESIGN AND CRAFT SKILLS
2. www.oshineye.com/+
3. www.oshineye.com/+
4. ACQUISITION TRANSMISSION GROWTH SKILL
5. API DESIGNERS IN THE ROOM?
8. 1 UX techniques for developer-facing products 2 Focus on the OOB experience 3 Use convention over configuration 4 Design away common problems
9. UX TECHNIQUES FOR DEVELOPERS
10. FOCUS ON THE OUT-OF-BOX EXPERIENCE
12. CONVENTION OVER CONFIGURATION
13. DESIGN AWAY COMMON PROBLEMS
17. AFFORDANCES
18. ZUHANDEN READY-TO-HAND
19. VORHANDEN PRESENT-AT-HAND
20. API DESIGN & API USE
21. ASPIRATIONAL
22. EXAMPLES PATTERNS HEURISTICS
23. DEVELOPEREXPERIENCE.ORG @DEVEXPFTW +DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE #devexp
24. RICHARD SENNETT AND THE SKILL OF REPAIR http://www.flickr.com/photos/arselectronica/4953202301
25. REPAIR “making and repairing form a single whole” “it is by fixing things that we often get to understand how they work”
26. STATIC REPAIR “the simplest way to make a repair is to take something apart, find and fix what’s wrong, then restore the object to its former state”
27. DYNAMIC REPAIR “a dynamic repair will change the object’s current form or function once it is reassembled” “the dynamic repair may involve a jump of domains, as when a mathematical formula corrects a defect in observed data. Or the dynamic repair may invite new tools for working with objects”
28. CONTINUUM OF MAKING AND REPAIRING 1 New code 2 Refactoring 3 Legacy code
29. SKILL AND COMMUNITY “in craftwork, people can and do improve” “the isolated expert sends a signal that the organization is in trouble” “too many modern experts imagine themselves in the Stradivari trap−indeed, we could call the Stradivari Syndrome the conviction that one’s expertise is ineffable...as a result their skills degrade over time in comparison with doctors who turn outward professionally”
30. REFACTORING != REPAIR Refactoring: behaviour-preserving transformation Transformation in other dimensions Repair focusses on change in various dimensions
31. EXAMPLE: FEEDPARSER
32. BROKEN? Last release: 2007 XXX open bugs and patches Supported ancient versions of Python Standard Feedparser for Python (and other) communities
33. BROKEN? No new committers in years Centralised development Comprehensive acceptance suite
34. START SMALL, CONCRETE AND PUBLIC
35. START SMALL, CONCRETE AND PUBLIC
36. EMBRACE POSITIVE DEVIATION AND DYNAMIC REPAIR
37. REPAIR IS A SKILLED PROCESS OF RENEWAL NOT AN EVENT
38. AFFORDANCE AND SKILL
39. EMPATHY AND API DESIGN
44. INFORMATION IS WORTHLESS IF IT DOESN’T CHANGE YOU
45. CHANGE A LITTLE
46. THANK YOU!