Perceived obstacles by novice developers adopting user interface APIs and tools

摘要

An Application-Programming Interface or API provides a set of program functions that can be used to build new applications. In this paper, we study how to use the expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) to identify API usability problems, and what obstacles a novice developer faces when learning a new API and its accompanying development tools. We conduct a study over the impact of using a visual editor on API usability and then use the expectation-confirmation theory to study perceptions about the API and the editor. We finally present a list of obstacles found in the study that can be used by others to create more usable APIs and development tools.