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International Conference on Human-Centred Software Engineering

HCSE 2012: Human-Centered Software Engineering pp 164–180Cite as

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Methods towards API Usability: A Structural Analysis of Usability Problem Categories

Methods towards API Usability: A Structural Analysis of Usability Problem Categories

  • Thomas Grill19,
  • Ondrej Polacek19 &
  • Manfred Tscheligi19 
  • Conference paper
  • 3306 Accesses

  • 17 Citations

  • 1 Altmetric

Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNPSE,volume 7623)

Abstract

The usability of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is one of the main factors defining the success of a software based framework. Research in the area of human computer interaction (HCI) currently mainly focuses on end-user usability and only little research has been done regarding the usability of APIs. In this paper, we present a methodology on how to use and combine HCI methods with the goal to evaluate the usability of APIs. The methodology consist of three phases - a heuristic evaluation, a developer workshop and interviews. We setup a case-study according to the methodology, in which we are evaluating the usability of a service-oriented framework API. The goal was to explore different HCI methods and compare the applicability of such methods to find usability problems in an API. The case-study combined qualitative and quantitative methods in order to investigate the usability and intuitiveness of the API itself. It allowed us to identify relevant problem areas for usability related issues that could be mapped to specific types of HCI methods. Examples for this are e.g. structural problems, which are identified mainly in inspection methods, while problems regarding errors and exception handling are mainly identified during the hands-on example part of the developer workshops conducted. The resulting problem areas allow us to develop a first classification of API related usability problems that are making the relevancy of usability issues for APIs more explicit and applicable.

Keywords

  • API
  • Usability
  • Contextual Interaction Framework
  • HCI

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria

    Thomas Grill, Ondrej Polacek & Manfred Tscheligi

Authors
  1. Thomas Grill
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  2. Ondrej Polacek
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  3. Manfred Tscheligi
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier, France

    Marco Winckler

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Str. 21, D-18051, Rostock, Germany

    Peter Forbrig

  3. ICS-IRIT, University Paul Sabatier, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062, Toulouse Cedex 9, France

    Regina Bernhaupt

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Grill, T., Polacek, O., Tscheligi, M. (2012). Methods towards API Usability: A Structural Analysis of Usability Problem Categories. In: Winckler, M., Forbrig, P., Bernhaupt, R. (eds) Human-Centered Software Engineering. HCSE 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7623. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34347-6_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34347-6_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-34346-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-34347-6

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