How do you validate your API usability assumptions and hypotheses?

Defining goals only based on user outcomes leaves too much room for misuse of company resources. The process of maintaining, developing, and funding an API solution needs to be taken into account if a company wishes to maintain the knowledge and the employees that are building the solution. The process is just as important as the outcome.

Before you can validate anything, you need to have a clear idea of what you're trying to achieve with your API and how you'll measure your success. What are the main problems that your API solves for your users? What are the key features and benefits that your API offers? How do you define usability for your API? What are the indicators that your API is easy to use, learn, and integrate? Define your API goals and metrics in terms of user outcomes, not technical specifications, and make them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Business goals need to be considered here - align business goals to customer problems to solve. A couple key questions: - Is your business at its core an API (examples: Stripe or Twilio)? Or is your API complementing a core customer-facing product (example: Salesforce)? - Is your API meant for customers to use internally? Or for partners to build solutions adopted by your customers (a partner ecosystem)? These are a start to establish goals and metrics, leading to topics like monetization, whether to charge for API access directly at all, etc.

Many practitioners find value in using a design thinking approach in this step, such as the Value Proposition Canvas. It helps to get to know your target audience including their goals, needs, challenges, pains, and gains. If you have clarity on your audience and the market, it becomes much easier to construct an API product for the needs of the market. Achieving this product-market fit for your API is the first milestone of a successful API. So take some time to define your target users.

To validate API usability assumptions, start by identifying your target users and understanding their needs. Employ a range of research methods such as surveys, interviews, and user personas to gather insights on their goals, challenges, and preferences. Assess their technical skills and familiarity with APIs to tailor your API accordingly. Creating detailed user profiles based on this research helps ensure that your API meets real user needs and addresses pain points effectively. By grounding your assumptions in user research, you can refine your API design to enhance usability and provide a better user experience.

Usability Testing: This involves observing users interact with the API or a prototype, gathering insights into usability issues. Tools like Postman, Swagger, and Fiddler help simulate API requests and test responses, while Zoom, Loom, or UserTesting can record user sessions for further analysis. User Feedback: Collect feedback through surveys or forums. Tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, and Google Forms can gather user opinions, while platforms like UserVoice, GitHub, or Slack enable discussions and suggestions. Analytics: Use tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Segment to track user behavior and performance. Monitoring tools like Apigee, New Relic, or Sentry are helpful for troubleshooting and identifying errors within the API.

Validating API usability assumptions and hypotheses requires a structured approach to gathering and analyzing user feedback. Start by conducting usability tests to observe how users interact with your API, using tools like Postman or Swagger for hands-on testing. Incorporate user feedback by utilizing survey platforms such as SurveyMonkey or Typeform to collect opinions and suggestions. For deeper insights, consider using analytics tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel to track user behavior and performance metrics. Additionally, leverage platforms like UserVoice or GitHub to facilitate ongoing feedback and community discussions. Combining these methods ensures you get a comprehensive view of your API’s usability and areas for improvement

To ensure your API meets user needs effectively, it's essential to analyze and act on user feedback and behavior. Start by gathering feedback through usability testing and monitoring real-world usage. Compare this data against your expected outcomes to identify any discrepancies. Evaluate if your initial expectations align with actual user experiences. Based on these insights, adjust your API by refining features, enhancing documentation, simplifying authentication, or optimizing performance. Continuously iterate on this process, incorporating feedback into each new version to ensure ongoing improvement and relevance. This approach helps you create a more user-friendly and effective API.

Design-Driven API principles are a trending term for this idea. Years ago I just called it "applying Product Management principles to APIs".

To validate your API usability assumptions and hypotheses, start by gathering feedback from actual users through usability testing and surveys to understand their experiences and pain points. Implement A/B testing to compare different versions of the API and assess performance metrics. Analyze usage data to see how well the API meets user needs and adjust based on the findings. Continuously refine your API based on real-world feedback and performance to ensure it aligns with user expectations and requirements.

First of all, you'll need to define what API usability is and, to do that, you have to identify your target users: devs? end-users? a sw processes? both? Different types of target users means different usability requirements. And then, I would suggest prototyping the API and involved your target users on the validation. This will reduce the impact of potential errors in API development.

The general idea that the only users of a platform are the end clients is a fallacy that doesn't take into consideration that someone has to build/repair the inner workings of whatever solution is being built. Having a solution that is helpful to end clients is good because it provides revenue, but having a solution that doesn't scale or isn't easily maintainable is asking for that revenue source to either dry up, or to become too expensive to migrate/maintain. I believe a more nuanced approach to solution architecting needs to be adopted by companies, and a consideration for the smart employees maintaining the solution needs to be included.