Guide: API for Beginners

Overview

This deliverable was for the PTW 330 Technical Writing class at University of Washington. For the duration of the class we worked in groups focusing on one final deliverable and all supporting content. My group chose a white paper hosted web site about API documentation with a beginner user as our audience.

Challenges faced

The primary challenge was working asynchronously as a group. In the beginning, we felt disorganized as no real defined roles had been given. We quickly knew we needed to fix this problem and committed to weekly Zoom calls to align our vision and progress.

Skills employed

User Research
- Interviews
- Persona
- Empathy Mapping
- Journey Mapping
- Usability Testing
Writing, Editing and Design
Google Docs for Writing and Editing
Canva for Website Development

Problems Solved and Content’s Impact

The scope of API is vast, as a group we wanted to create something for a beginner user. However, our user research showed many people were familiar with or already worked with API documentation. The downside to this was that we, as producers, were not very familiar. Overall, the document serves as a beginner friendly guide with product spotlights that users may not have recognized as API. We also felt it necessary to include a downloadable checklist in the event someone wanted to create API and needed a comprehensive overview of what to include.