The Power of Design
Learn how design helps us bring consistency and compatibility to an API.
We'll cover the following...
Art, architecture, and design all rely on the expertise of the creator in order to achieve the final result—the building, the canvas, the musical score, or the API. Even though the final results rarely look the same from person to person, artists and designers often share a similar method or style when they go through the process of creating their work. It’s this process or method that can be described and standardized.
When we all use the same general method, even when we come to different final results, those results are very likely to be compatible and work together easily. This is the power of a good design process. It allows people to continue to think for themselves, to contribute in unique ways, and still come up with results that are compatible across the organization.
Creating compatible solutions is an important element of a healthy API program. In most companies, the API program will be used for multiple years, have lots of different people involved, and use several different technologies and products. Throughout all those changes, one of the things we can keep as constant is our design process or method. By teaching our developers the same design method, we gain consistency without overconstraining their creativity.
A good design method also doesn’t assume any single technology stack or toolset. That means we’ll be able to grow an API program over time that’s built on the power of consistent design methods and is not reliant on any single API format, protocol, or other ...