What is API Usability?

What is API Usability?

API Usability is the bottom layer of the API Hierarchy of Needs. These are all the layers, ordered from bottom to top:

• Usability
• Functionality
• Reliability
• Proficiency
• Creativity

Let’s look at the bottom layer of the API Hierarchy of Needs and try to understand what API Usability really means. Usability is something that the Design discipline has studied before. These are the thoughts of several Product Design experts:

• Don Norman, author of “Design of Everyday Things,” defines usability as the ease of use and learnability of a product.
• Steve Krug, author of “Don’t Make Me Think,” describes usability as the quality of a UI that makes it easy for users to understand, use, and navigate without unnecessary cognitive effort.
• Alan Cooper, author of “The Inmates Are Running the Asylum,” explains that usability is the capability of a product to be understood, learned, and used by users to achieve their goals.

It’s clear that there’s an emphasis on removing friction, making learning easy, and offering a clear path to first use. API Usability should be similar. As a developer, you should be able to understand what the API does, learn how to use it, and have a clear and straightforward way to sign up and start using it. That is API usability.