Articles

Once a developer knows how to use your API, they will need detailed instructions on how to build the actual integration. Experienced developers already familiar with an API, including its creators, will have a hard time completing an integration without access to the API reference. In this post we’ll show how the developer portals in our research sample implemented their reference pages, compare their formats and labels, and try to deduct best practices you could apply on your developer portal.

The function of the guides and tutorial pages that are linked from an onboarding page is to fulfill the expectation of learning and to design an experience that will be as close as possible to the learning requirements of key audience segments. In this post, we will explore how the sites we reviewed included guides and tutorials in their information architecture, we’ll look at what they covered, and finish with listing what could help to maximize their effectiveness.

Onboarding pages need to hook the developer. In this article we’ll list the various roles onboarding pages need to fulfill, explore how the developer portals we reviewed expose them and how they are labelled.

The "Overview Page" provides a devportal with an entrance page for developers to start exploring. What are strategies to structure information? What is the function of your developer portal? What to know to build an appealing overview page.

This blog post is about my methods for becoming a better writer in English. It shows my tricks for self-improvement. I don’t want to pretend I have accomplished my goal: I’m still on the road and I have a lot to learn. But I hope this writing could be of help to others with the same challenges.

An API is not a thing, it is a weird presence we communicate with, develop and implement. An API is an abstract idea, which is hard to catch for non-developers. I find some concepts challenging to truly understand, let alone explain without context. Take language or loyalty for example. Or an API. What is it? Like Schrödinger's cat, such abstract concepts loose their real characteristics if we try to pin a static definition on them. But if a feline entity is so useful in explaining the quantum state, maybe metaphors would work for APIs too. I studied quantumchemistry, so you see how the cat got here. In this blogpost, I try to show what an API is in action, using metaphors from different professions and the definitions I found on the internet. This one goes out for the lawyer, the med, the interpreter and the writer.