A design guide for usable web APIs

Cloud computing trends such as Software as a Service (SaaS) enable providers to host complex applications over the Internet, making them available to external consumers through an Application Programming Interface (API). The success of a SaaS, and in some sense any distributed system, is greatly influenced by its API. Highly usable APIs improve the efficiency of the development process and its quality, ensuring that programmers continue to appreciate other aspects of the API while increasing their productivity. Different studies state that the design phase within the development process of an API is the most appropriate to address usability issues. Therefore, usability should be considered as an explicit criterion in the design of an API. In this paper, we propose a design guide for web APIs with an emphasis on usability, using the best practices of usable web APIs design. Our design guide is based on an adaptation of the design science research methodology (DSRM), and it is complemented with a systematic literature review and gray literature analysis concerning methods, techniques, and tools used to develop usable APIs.