4 Must-Read Articles on Developer Experience (DX)
We live in an API Economy where APIs are more important to business success than ever before. Companies are digitalizing their businesses at a breathtaking rate, and they use APIs to integrate customers and partners into their new digital business processes.
A result of this is that Developer Experience (DX) — which is all about using User Experience (UX) techniques to make life easier for third-party developers calling your public APIs — is fast becoming essential to remain competitive in the digital economy.
But how in the world do you apply UX techniques, such as personas, prototypes and usability testing, to the developer experience?
I personally think this is a really exciting topic and I’ve read hundreds of good articles about the topic, but if I had to choose the best of the best, I would pick these four:
- Why API Developer Experience Matters More Than Ever — This is the best intro that I have seen to developer experience.
- User Personas for HTTP APIs — A collection of example personas for a REST API. It is really an eye opener to see how many different types of users there can be of a single API, and how different their needs are.
- Patterns of Developer Experience — Great post about the principles and patterns for effective DX. The DX Pattern collection at the end of the post is a must-have reference library.
- Building Effective API Programs: Developer Experience (DX) — If you want to go all the way and create a Developer Program then this article lists what such a program should include and gives an example of what it looks like in the real world.
Happy reading!
Image credit: Tomek Paczkowski
