Elements of API Product Design

Building an API product starts with designing what it will look like and how it will behave. To design an API product, you can follow a series of steps that help you align your ideas with what stakeholders need. This chapter will guide you through the five steps of API design. You will get to know how to connect the dots between API ideation, strategy, definition, validation, and specification. This chapter acts as an introduction to each of these steps, all of which will be expanded on later in this book.

This chapter begins by explaining the ideation step and how to execute it. You’ll learn how to obtain a high-level vision of the API product and evolve it using techniques such as brainstorming. Then, you’ll see what a good strategy looks like and how it can help you during other stages of the API life cycle. After that, you’ll learn how to translate the ideas for your API product into a definition of its architectural style...