A case study of API redesign for improved usability

Stylos, Jeffrey; Graf, Birgit; Busse, Daniela; Ziegler, C.; Ehret, Ralf; Karstens, Jan

doi:10.1109/vlhcc.2008.4639083

Cited by 35 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…For instance, one article details a number of functionality and usability problems with the .NET socket Select() function in C# [11], and uses this to motivate more focus on the usability of APIs in general. In another study, API users reported difficulty with SAP's BRFplus API -a business rules engine, and a redesign of the API dramatically improved users' success and timeto-completion [21]. A study of the early version of SAP's APIs for enterprise service-oriented architecture (eSOA) identified problems with documentation, and there were additional issues with the API itself, including names that were too long (see Figure 2), unclear dependencies, 1 We are making a list of usability issues with APIs -please send your stories to the first author.…”

Section: Examples Of Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This makes it clear what they are looking for or trying to achieve, and in general why they are making certain choices. A researcher might be interested in a more formal A-vs.-B test, comparing, for example, an old vs. new version of an API (as was done in [6,21,25]), but usually the insights about usability barriers that come out of an informal think-aloud evaluation are sufficient.…”

Section: Evaluating the Api Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Improving API usability

2016

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Section: Examples Of Problemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evaluating the Api Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving API usability

2016

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“…Students in these classes are far beyond learning to use programming primitives such as loops and conditions; instead, they must figure out how to combine APIs to create new software. This is a challenge; researchers have identified many ways in which misunderstandings about APIs can interfere with programming [2], [12] and reduce productivity by as much as a factor of six [13]- [15].…”

Section: Pedagogical Challenges Of Helping People Learn To Use Apismentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Intelligent Tutors to Teach Students How APIs Are Used for Software Engineering in Practice

2013

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Abstract-Computer science courses typically incorporate integrated training in software engineering, which includes learning how to reuse existing code libraries in new programs. This commonly presents a need to use the libraries' application programming interfaces (APIs) during project-based learning activities. The students learn these APIs with little support from the instructor. Instead, they primarily learn from whatever code examples they find on the web-a scattershot approach that is slow, frustrating and sometimes fruitless. Preliminary work investigated an improved approach that provides students with intelligent API tutors. This interactive educational content walks students through code examples selectively harvested from the web. This approach increased students' knowledge of API method names, but a key pedagogical challenge remained: students still lacked an understanding of common problems and surprises that they might encounter when using APIs in practice. Perhaps even more crucially, the prior statistical study provided no information about how students would perceive and accept the intelligent tutor approach, when given a choice. Therefore, the current paper presents an enhanced approach that augments intelligent tutors with selected information from online FAQs and online open source code, thereby providing more explanation and context about how to use APIs in practice. A qualitative study assessed student perceptions of the system's usability as well as suggestions for improvement, revealing that 100% of students considered the approach to be useful. A key implication is that providing information from online FAQs, related articles, and open source code could facilitate computer science students' learning how to use APIs.

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“…Members of our group have helped with the redesign of a business process rules engine called SAP BRFplus [11], and proposed improvements to SAP's eSOA (enterprise Service Oriented Architectures) web services [6,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A case study of using HCI methods to improve tools for programmers

Faulring¹,

Myers²,

Oren³

et al. 2012

2012 5th International Workshop on Co-Operative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE)

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Abstract-For more than five years, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have been collaborating with several SAP teams to improve the usability of SAP's developer tools and programming APIs. Much research has shown that HCI techniques can improve the tools that developers use to write software. In a recent project, we applied HCI techniques to a SAP developer tool for the SAP NetWeaver Gateway product. The SAP team building this tool uses agile software development processes, which allowed them to quickly improve the tool's usability based upon the evaluations.

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A case study of API redesign for improved usability

Cited by 35 publications

References 4 publications

Improving API usability

Improving API usability

Using Intelligent Tutors to Teach Students How APIs Are Used for Software Engineering in Practice

A case study of using HCI methods to improve tools for programmers

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