The Developer Experience

User Experience (UX) design and the concepts that come with it play a big role in the way I design and develop every day. If you’re creating something for anyone, you’re doing a disservice to your creating it if you don’t take into account what their experience will be once you hand it over.

UX in web design and now consumer software design is huge. It’s as important, if not more important, that you get the UX right over the techno-functional operation of whatever it is you are building. The UX can make or break your product.

Back in the 90’s UX was shadowed by functionality. If it functioned, it was praised, regardless of how you made it work. Things have transitioned for the consumer, Apple is evidence of this. They put all their chips in UX and look at them now.

Let’s switch gears for a moment, put the UX discussion in your back pocket. I think we’re already in transition from the idea that apps get built on proprietary functionality to apps sitting on platforms and service APIs. Even if a company is building their own platform and service from the ground up, it means more flexibility and capability for what they build on top of that.

Now bringing these two thoughts together, here is my point: The Developer Experience (DX?) is going to be a key driving factor as we continue to migrate toward this separation of platform and app. Platforms will compete to win, just as apps do now. And all of this is happening already, and I think some people get it; some APIs have great documentation and consoles to play around with them before you even start integrating them. But I think we’re only steps into the water on this. For platforms to win, the DX has to be great, and those who embrace this idea now are going to prosper.

So if you’re building an API, whether you’re big company or an indie dev building out a library of code, stop and ask yourself, what is the Developer Experience you are creating?