How to measure your API usability?
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Task invocation ratio
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Structure
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Navigation
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Time to first call
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Error handling
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UX without user research
is not UX
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User Research
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Participatory design
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Persona development
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Test
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Write client code
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Metrics
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Documentation
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Getting started guide
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Common use cases
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Sandbox
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Error Handling
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Different errors requires different exceptions
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Descriptive error messages
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“Errors should never pass silently. Unless explicitly
silenced”
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Top-down approach
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How the API should behave?
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Prototype
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Iterate
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Feedback
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Prototype and Iterate
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Design/Prototype
Implementation
Customer
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Design/Prototype
Implementation
Customer :D
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API Blueprint
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apiblueprint.org
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Mock tools
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Tests
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Empathy
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Understand
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Put yourself on your users’ shoes
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All of your users (Personas)
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Functionalities are eternal
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Or at least as long your API version lasts
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Please don’t break clients by removing
functionalities
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Users only use your API once, everything else is
automated
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“APIs are starting to look more like the
product and less like the technology.”
Jason Harmon, Head of API Design @ PayPal