Enhancing API Adoption
One of the significant challenges in the development of APIs is capturing and conveying their business value effectively.
APIs are inherently technical components. While developers readily understand JSON payloads, OpenAPI (Swagger) specifications, and Postman demonstrations, business stakeholders often respond better to interactive demos.
The product’s value becomes more apparent when stakeholders can interact with and experience it directly. Therefore, investing in demo frontends for API-only products can be beneficial.
By creating a custom graphical user interface (UI) alongside the API product, stakeholders can relate to familiar analogies such as paper forms or reports. As the demo UI’s interaction model and sophistication evolve, stakeholders can make more informed decisions about the API product’s direction. Additionally, working on the UI fosters developers’ empathy for business users.
Although this technique has been successfully employed for as long as API products have existed, it has yet to be widely recognized. Therefore, it is valuable to highlight this approach.