The Developer Experience

What makes for a good developer experience? How do you improve yours? That's what I explore in this talk, given at Atlassian Summit 2012.

Transcript

1. The Developer Experience WHAT IT IS WHY IT MATTERS HOW TO MAKE IT NOT SUCK pamelafox.org @pamelafox pamelafox@ twitter.com/ gmail.com http://
2. User Experience “The sum of all interactions and events, both positive and negative, between a user and a web site.” AKA “bla bla bla”
3. User Experience Do I want to use it? How do I sign up? How do I get started? How do I use it? How do I get help?
4. DO I WANT TO USE IT?
5. HOW DO I SIGN UP?
6. HOW DO I SIGN UP?
7. HOW DO I GET STARTED?
8. HOW DO I USE IT?
9. HOW DO I GET HELP?
10. DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE “The sum of all interactions and events, both positive and negative, between a developer and a library, tool, or API.”
11. DEVELOPER EXPERIENCE Do I want to use it? How do I sign up? How do I get started? How do I use it? How do I get help?
12. DO I WANT TO USE IT?
13. HOW DO I SIGN UP?
14. HOW DO I GET STARTED?
15. HOW DO I USE IT?
16. HOW DO I GET HELP?
17. why should you care?
18. Who are you? PROVIDERS CONSUMERS Developer Experience (Library, Tool, API, ...)
19. ...who am I? CONSUMER PROVIDER Childhood University hood Now CONSUMER 2002 2006 2011 2006
20. why does DX matter? I have to use X. Bad Experience Low Barrier for Leaving Bare Minimum Usage
21. why does DX matter? I like to use X. Good Experience Innovative Usage External Evangelism
22. let’s break it down...
23. Do I want to use it?
24. Documentation Interactive Explorer Does it have the features I need?
25. Can I safely build a business on top of it? Licensing Pricing Stability
26. Case Studies
27. How do I sign up?
28. How do I sign up? No signup! No key! Best answer:
29. Automated Key Signup
30. Usage Dashboard
31. How do I get started?
32. Downloads for Every Environment
33. Client Libraries for Every Language
34. “Hello World” (From 0 to 60 in 15 minutes)
35. How do I use it? How do I learn how to use it? Do I enjoy using it?
36. Documentation How do I learn how to use it? Comprehensive Easy to Navigate Reference & Guide Easy to Search Running Code Feedback Loop
37. Documentation When in doubt, document. Comprehensive should be Every method, parameter, return value, defaults, implementation notes, errors, side effects, deprecation notices.
38. Documentation should include both Reference & Guide
39. Documentation should include Runnable Code
40. Documentation should be Easy to Navigate
41. Documentation should be Easy to Search
42. Documentation should be Easy to Search on Google, too
43. Familiarity Do I enjoy using it? API Design Simplicity Compatibility Debuggability
44. API Design: HTTP Familiarity Simplicity Compatibility Debuggability Use standards (when it makes sense) REST, RPC, OAuth. Support both JSON & XML. Give meaningful error messages. Don’t throttle. Most importantly: Never ever use SOAP.
45. How do I get help?
46. Forum Email & Feeds !Spam Stats & Badges
47. Issue Tracker Comments Status Votes Notification Categories Search
48. THE EXPERIENCE CURVE
49. THE FEEDBACK LOOP ..should be infinite..
50. Feedback Forms
51. Surveys QT Survey Mozilla Add-Ons SDK Blackboard API Survey
52. Usability Testing AT&T Usability Testing Did you complete the task? How hard was it? Would you recommend this API? What would have made the experience of using the API better? Whose API does it better than we do?
53. Paying Attention Twitter Google Alerts Conference Talks Blog posts
54. MAKEOVER TIME!
55. Google Maps API v2 v3 keys no keys! bloated library MVC architecture (smaller download) GMap, GMarker,... google.maps.* GPolygon(latlngs, strokeColor, strokeWeight, strokeOpacity, fillColor, fillOpacity, opts) google.maps.Polygon(options)
56. ZeptoJS
57. NOW WHAT?
58. providers: 1. Care 2. Prioritize 3. Improve I
59. CONSUMERS It’d be great if you changed X. I’d use it more if it had feature Y. Thanks - look what I made with it! Thanks!
60. The Developer Experience IT MATTERS LETS MAKE IT NOT SUCK developerexperience.org developer-support-handbook.org for more... @pamelafox