API Strategy & Practice Conference 2017

When building an API, we usually spend some time designing it, most of the time building it, and scribble out some instructions for how to use it at the end. We’re doing it wrong. Making our API this way means we start by thinking about ourselves and don’t think about who is using it until the very end. Instead, we should be thinking about users first. If we’re making this API for other people, we need to understand who the user is, what they know, and what they're trying to do. This lets us build an API that people will actually use, and docs that help them get the solution they want. This can be building features that make the docs better, but just as often it is pointing out the simple things people need to get started. No matter what, the first step is to talk to your users! With just a few questions to a few people, you can make your API infinitely better. With more and more APIs competing to offer similar services, a little attention to your users can give you a huge advantage.