IBM API Connect Wins the 2019 iF Design Award
The IBM design team is recognized for their achievement by the IF Design Awards for the second year in a row
The IBM Cloud design team is thrilled to have won a 2019 iF Design Award in the Communications — Software Application category for IBM API Connect. We are so excited to be honored by this award and are grateful to be recognized for our team’s hard work.
The iF label is renowned worldwide for outstanding design services, and the iF Design Award is among one of the greatest design accomplishments. The competition was intense this year, with 6,375 entries submitted from 52 countries, and a jury consisting of top experts from all over the world.
This is our team’s second year in a row receiving the iF Design Award, after winning for IBM APP Connect and IBM Data Science Experience last year. We are always working to bring a focus to the user experience of our products, and it’s exciting to see these efforts being recognized.
What is IBM API Connect?
IBM API Connect empowers software developers, businesses, and organizations to easily launch and scale the API ecosystems we interact with every day. The world’s most important infrastructures like government, healthcare, and finance rely on APIs to share data and services. IBM API Connect’s powerful tools and intuitive workflows make this software service stand out from other services, helping users rapidly create, secure, and manage APIs.
IBM API Connect is designed specifically for API developers to simplify their workflow and gather useful resources into one dashboard. The software includes a number of features such as built-in templates, visual tools to create and compare APIs, and a dashboard that displays important metrics and API stats, among others, that make API management a smooth process.
Design Process
The design team behind IBM API Connect started their process by figuring out the needs and pain points of their target user base — API developers. Through user research, the design team found that their users’ needs are centered around efficiency, transparency, and automation. Developers are often dealing with a disjointed workflow, having to switch between using several tools and finding data scattered across different resources. The process of building APIs is also daunting as it requires a high level of expertise and the knowledge of complex user interfaces.
In order to make this a developer-centric product, the design team created an engaging and easy-to-use interface so that users can adopt its new tools without needing extensive training. The software application allows the developers to automatically generate code for their APIs by filling out a template and switching between a visual and code editing view. Dealing with API metrics also becomes easier as the software features a dashboard that gathers important API performance metrics into one view.
IBM API Connect offers a streamlined workflow and accessibility for users with varying levels of experience. It overall provides developers with a tool specifically designed for their needs, in a software field that doesn’t often prioritize its’ users.
“With IBM API Connect, we can get new features to market up to four times faster” — Eric Barault, API Connect client
User-centered products are key to success
IBM Cloud design had a great year in 2018 full of achievements, and we are thrilled to be starting off strong in 2019 with this award. Our team is continuously working to ensure that design is integral to all of our products and that we are putting user needs at the center of our design work. With this iF Design Award we continue to see that these efforts are paying off and can make a difference in the enterprise software industry.
Winning team:
Design Manager: Christopher Nardi
Design Lead: Sichao Wu
Design Team: Mihir Chauhan, Wayne Chou, Roger Davenport, Jesse Ellenbogen, Jill Lin, Keesa Robinson, Krista Starr
Arin Bhowmick (@arinbhowmick) is Vice President, Design at IBM based in San Francisco, California. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
