Applying Design Principles to API Initiatives
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This document discusses applying universal design principles to API initiatives. It outlines the typical development cycle of requirements, design, development, and testing. It then discusses several universal design principles and how they can be applied at each stage of the development cycle, including the 80/20 rule, consistency, the flexibility-usability tradeoff, layering, constraints, the inverted pyramid, errors, and visibility. Applying these principles helps ensure APIs are usable, learnable, and meet the needs of application developers.
Applying Design Principles to API Initiatives
- 1. Applying Universal Design Principles to API Ini5a5ves Kevin Swiber @kevinswiber Alan Languirand Apigee @13protons @apigee
- 5. @kevinswiber @13protons Kevin Swiber Alan Languirand
- 6. amazon.com *
- 7. “ Successful products typically follow four stages of crea5on: requirements, design, development, and tes5ng. Development Cycle Universal Principles of Design *
- 8. Development Cycle Requirements Design Development Tes5ng *
- 9. Development Cycle Requirements Design Development Tes5ng 80/20 Consistency Inverted Pyramid Signal to Noise Ra5o Errors Validate Flexibility vs. Layering Usability Trade-‐off Visibility Constraints *
- 10. Applica5on Developers are Kingmakers App App App World of API Internal App API User Store Developer APIs Team Systems
- 11. Ques5ons to ask at each phase: • What is the app developer doing? • How can we help? *
- 12. Development Cycle Requirements Design Development Tes5ng 80/20 Consistency Inverted Pyramid Signal to Noise Ra5o Errors Validate Flexibility vs. Layering Usability Trade-‐off Visibility Constraints *
- 13. “ A high percentage of effects in any large system are caused by a low percentage of variables. 80/20 Rule Universal Principles of Design *
- 14. Invest in highly-‐used features *
- 15. Fix high-‐impact bugs *
- 16. “ As the flexibility of a system increases, its usability decreases. Flexibility-‐Usability Tradeoff Universal Principles of Design *
- 17. Many op5ons vs. quick adop5on *
- 18. Start with a well-‐defined use case *
- 19. Iterate to greater flexibility *
- 20. Development Cycle Requirements Design Development Tes5ng 80/20 Consistency Inverted Pyramid Signal to Noise Ra5o Errors Validate Flexibility vs. Layering Usability Trade-‐off Visibility Constraints *
- 21. Point the way *
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- 23. “ The usability of a system is improved when similar parts are expressed in similar ways. Consistency Universal Principles of Design *
- 24. Define paerns *
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- 26. “ The process of organizing informa5on into related groupings in order to manage complexity and reinforce rela5onships in the informa5on. Layering Universal Principles of Design *
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- 28. “ A method of limi5ng the ac5ons that can be performed on a system. Constraint Universal Principles of Design *
- 32. Development Cycle Requirements Design Development Tes5ng 80/20 Consistency Inverted Pyramid Signal to Noise Ra5o Errors Validate Flexibility vs. Layering Usability Trade-‐off Visibility Constraints *
- 33. Share our domain knowledge *
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- 38. Share our API knowledge *
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- 42. “ A method of informa5on presenta5on in which informa5on is presented in descending order of importance. Inverted Pyramid Universal Principles of Design *
- 43. Does alphabet soup taste good? *
- 44. List resources by importance *
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- 48. “ An ac5on or omission of ac5on yielding an unintended consequence. Errors Universal Principles of Design *
- 49. Make it easy to learn from mistakes *
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- 53. “ The usability of a system is improved when its status and methods of use are clearly visible. Visibility Universal Principles of Design *
- 54. Be transparent and human *
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- 58. Development Cycle Requirements Design Development Tes5ng 80/20 Consistency Inverted Pyramid Signal to Noise Ra5o Errors Validate Flexibility vs. Layering Usability Trade-‐off Visibility Constraints *
- 59. Ask for input, give data *
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- 63. “ The ra5o of relevant to irrelevant informa5on in a display. The highest possible signal-‐to-‐noise ra5o is desirable in design. Signal-‐to-‐Noise Ra5o Universal Principles of Design *
- 64. Maintain clarity. *
- 65. Tip: Verify design principles as well as correctness. *
- 66. Universal Principles of Design • Educate others about our domain • Cer5fy our partner developers • Inspire with an app gallery • Guide the design of apps • List the objects in our system • Engage developers with an API console • Be accessible via forums, social media & email • Receive bugs & feature requests directly from developers • Show each developer his API data • Respond with HTTP status codes for apps • Respond with verbose messages for app developers • Create social error pages with details and hints • Favor flexibility • Op5mize usability • Eliminate unnecessary choices • Invest in highly-‐used features • Fix high-‐impact bugs • List resources by importance *
- 67. Ques5ons
- 69. THANK YOU Ques%ons and ideas to: @kevinswiber @13protons groups.google.com/group/api-‐cra?