Using concept maps to evaluate the usability of APIs | Zendy

Jens Gerken | Zendy; Hans-Christian Jetter | Zendy; Harald Reiterer | Zendy

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Using concept maps to evaluate the usability of APIs

Author(s) -

Jens Gerken,

Hans-Christian Jetter,

Harald Reiterer

Publication year - 2010

Publication title -

kops (university of konstanz)

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Conference proceedings

DOI - 10.1145/1753846.1754082

Subject(s) - usability , computer science , human–computer interaction , application programming interface , user interface , heuristic evaluation , code (set theory) , usability inspection , cognitive walkthrough , usability lab , quality (philosophy) , usability engineering , software engineering , programming language , philosophy , set (abstract data type) , epistemology

Application programming interfaces (APIs) are the interfaces to existing code structures, such as widgets, frameworks, or toolkits. Therefore, they very much do have an impact on the quality of the resulting system. So ensuring that developers can make the most out of them is an important challenge. However standard usability evaluation methods as known from HCI have limitations in grasping the interaction between developer and API -- the GUI, which makes this interaction obvious, is missing. In this paper we present a longitudinal approach using concept maps and a question diary to make this interaction visible and study the usability of an API over time.

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