API friction

API friction is a concept I derived from David Pogue’s article on how technology products have increasingly become more challenging to use. In the Make Technology—and the World—Frictionless Scientific American article from 2012, Pogue states that every website where you need to fill in a form or spend time proving that you’re a human adds friction. My notion of API friction is a translation of what Pogue describes as product friction seen through the lenses of API users. Even though the result of both is dissatisfaction and a poor experience, the causes of each are not the same.

Previously, you learned about the factors that create a positive developer experience. A straightforward way of understanding API friction is to look at the negatives within developer experience and expand from there. All the challenges, obstacles, and difficulties that developers encounter are a part of API friction. The lower those obstacles are in the API hierarchy...