{"id":428,"date":"2020-09-27T01:55:49","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T01:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/?p=428"},"modified":"2020-10-05T14:23:10","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T14:23:10","slug":"meng-steinhardt-schubert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Optimizing API Documentation: An Empirical Test of Some Guidelines and Heuristics&#8221; &#8211; Michael Meng, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Andreas Schubert"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"members-access-error\">Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"members-access-error\">Sorry, but you do not have permission to view this content.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,23],"tags":[176,77,98,178,177,49,43],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.7.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Optimizing API Documentation: An Empirical Test of Some Guidelines and Heuristics&quot; - Michael Meng, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Andreas Schubert - SIGDOC Conference 2020<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The growing importance of application programming interfaces (APIs) creates a need to support software developers with effective documentation. Prior research has generated important findings regarding information needs of developers, and several guidelines have been proposed in response to these findings, but evidence is lacking whether such guidelines lead to better documentation. This paper contributes the results of an empirical test that compared the performance of two groups of developers working on pre-defined tasks with an API they were unfamiliar with. One group had access to documentation which was optimized following guidelines for API documentation design proposed in the literature whereas the other group used non-optimized documentation. Results show that developers working with optimized documentation made fewer errors and were faster in planning and executing the tasks. We conclude that the guidelines used in our study do have the intended effect and support initial interactions with an API.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Optimizing API Documentation: An Empirical Test of Some Guidelines and Heuristics&quot; - Michael Meng, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Andreas Schubert - SIGDOC Conference 2020\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The growing importance of application programming interfaces (APIs) creates a need to support software developers with effective documentation. Prior research has generated important findings regarding information needs of developers, and several guidelines have been proposed in response to these findings, but evidence is lacking whether such guidelines lead to better documentation. This paper contributes the results of an empirical test that compared the performance of two groups of developers working on pre-defined tasks with an API they were unfamiliar with. One group had access to documentation which was optimized following guidelines for API documentation design proposed in the literature whereas the other group used non-optimized documentation. Results show that developers working with optimized documentation made fewer errors and were faster in planning and executing the tasks. We conclude that the guidelines used in our study do have the intended effect and support initial interactions with an API.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"SIGDOC Conference 2020\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-27T01:55:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-10-05T14:23:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"SIGDOC\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@adamstrantz\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"SIGDOC\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"SIGDOC\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/#\/schema\/person\/dfe7e0b67f0f4fa8491050980755c2b1\"},\"headline\":\"&#8220;Optimizing API Documentation: An Empirical Test of Some Guidelines and Heuristics&#8221; &#8211; Michael Meng, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Andreas Schubert\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-27T01:55:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-10-05T14:23:10+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/\"},\"wordCount\":1320,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"api\",\"design\",\"documentation\",\"information\",\"studies\",\"usability\",\"user\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Research Paper\",\"Technical Communication\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/meng-steinhardt-schubert\/\",\"name\":\"\\\"Optimizing API Documentation: An Empirical Test of Some Guidelines and Heuristics\\\" - Michael Meng, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Andreas Schubert - SIGDOC Conference 2020\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sigdoc.acm.org\/conference\/2020\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-27T01:55:49+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-10-05T14:23:10+00:00\",\"description\":\"The growing importance of application programming interfaces (APIs) creates a need to support software developers with effective documentation. 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