Human Centered API Design
summary
Square builds the Square Reader SDK (Android and iOS) for custom point‑of‑sale and finds API quality comes from measurable choices: group surface into checkout manager, authorization and reader managers for discoverability; use Kotlin and Java example apps, docs written by non‑authors, quick usability sessions and even decompiled customer APKs to see real usage; replace fragile activity/result+retained fragment tricks with a typed data object + callback; treat errors as expected vs example code should be exemplary and prefer strong types, lint/build‑time checks and consistent names.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:07Why good API design matters
- 2:34API design principles
- 4:01No absolute best API
- 6:07Iterating on APIs
- 8:14Getting developer feedback
- 12:31Making APIs intuitive
- 14:57Domain consistency
- 19:55Platform-specific APIs
- 22:24Self-consistency
- 23:51Guiding developers
- 30:14Preventing API misuse
- 36:48Correcting mistakes
- 41:22Summary and Q&A
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