User Testing in the Invisible World of APIs

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How you name, design, and structure your APIs all has a huge impact on usability. What you request and what you return in any given call can change your developer’s experience, and so just as we test usability in an app on a phone, we need to test usability of our products. In this session, we’ll cover a few different techniques and strategies you can use to run user testing on your APIs. Learn how to prototype and get quick answers to little questions, as well as how to conduct some more extensive studies to really target future features and major fixes for your product.

Technology

The UX of DX: User Testing in the
Invisible World of APIs
Jenny Wanger
@jennydove

Improve
API Usability
by applying UX
Methods
Empathize
Scope
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Iterate
{dev}

Discovery Build something useful
Make it easy to navigateTaxonomy
Get the structures rightMock & Prototype
Find perfectionUsability
Our UX Framework

Interviews
Site Visits
Ethnography
TECHNIQUES
• Collaborate with your end user
to develop use cases
• Determine what information to
include that solves for their
need
Discovery
Taxonomy
Usability
Mock & Prototype

DISCOVERY
Observation > Conversation
Look for the
point of
marginal
return
# of users
learnings
Developers + End Users

Discovery
Taxonomy
Usability
Mock & Prototype
Card Sort
Tree Testing
TECHNIQUES
• Use user personas to create
different journeys for your
developers
• Focus on method and resource
names, order of operations

TAXONOMY
User
BIRTHPLACE AGE PET
Chicago 26 yrs old 3 Cats
/details
/attributes
/characteristics
/randomThings
/tags
/data

Discovery
Taxonomy
Usability
Mock & Prototype
Paper Prototypes
Instant Messenger APIs
TECHNIQUES
• Think through the structure of
the API request and response
body
• The goal is to get a basic
outline of each endpoint

$MOCK & PROTOTYPE GET forecast/London },{ "period": 3, "title": "Wednesday Night", "fcttext": "Overcast. Fog overnight. Low of 54F. Winds from the WSW at 5 to 15 mph.", "fcttext_metric": "Overcast. Fog overnight. Low of 12C. Breezy. Winds from the WSW at 10 to 20 km/h.", “precipitation": "0" },{ Percent or inches? Why is only one FCT tagged with the units? Should be fcttext_imperial and fcttext_metric$

Discovery
Taxonomy
Usability
Mock & Prototype
Usability Testing via Postman
or Swagger
TECHNIQUES
• Mock up your API in full detail
without a back end
• Follow UX usability testing
techniques to run testing
• This is where you decide on the
fine details: units, headers, etc.

USABILITY
• Charge a credit card for $12.50
• Apply a discount of 10% for every
person who uses the code “API
THE DOCS”
• Create a pricing chart for lattes,
cappuccinos, and mochas

Assess Vision
Don’t let an already-built API stop
you from building the right API
Version
15
APIs that are live today

CREATIVE
FIXES
GET reports
type: {periodic, summary,
histogram}
If periodic , please supply…
If summary, please supply…
If histogram, please supply…

HIDE WITH
DOCS
GET reports/periodic
type: periodic
Start_date: 10092017
End_date: 10102017
Start_time: 1124
End_time: 1909
Interval_length: 2
Interval_units: hours

Questions?
Users
first
Thanks to Emily Ryou for her contributions to this presentation.
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