How APIs move design forward |

Gestural interaction platform at Method Studios

Technology today is loud and demands attention. Digital interfaces are sources of friction between people and tasks. Design and developer tools behind invasive interfaces are even more antiquated in design and usability.

However,?APIs liberate us from technical pollution making calm and ubiquitous computing accessible. APIs put computers in the background and get technology out of the way and put people back in front.

What is an API?
APIs (application programming interface) make it possible for programmers to send and receive information across services via the web. When you log into an app via Facebook, you used an API. When you get a text message from Uber, you used an API. When you pan across a Google Maps on a website, you used an API. This programmer tool intends to make hooking into web platforms smooth and seamless. They reduce interfaces, clicks, context switches and friction. You can read??What is an API in layman terms?? on Quora.

Predictions about invisible technology?

The future of our designed world will likely have more technology, less interfaces and smoother interactions that make the two possible. What this can mean, if we design it so, is that people will spend less time installing software, trading screen names or fidgeting devices and spend more time with each other whether in person and virtually.

In Mark Weiser?s seminal piece about?ubiquitous?computing, written at Xerox Parc in 1999 ?(linked below), he says,

By pushing computers into the background, embodied virtuality will make individuals more aware of people on the other ends of their computer links? Even today people holed up in windowless offices before glowing computer screens may not see their fellows for the better part of each day. And in virtual reality, the outside world and all in habitants?effectively?cease to exist.

Ubiquitous computers, in contrast, reside in the human world and pose no barrier to personal?interactions. If anything, the transparent connections they offer between different locations and times may tend to bring communities closer together.

He then predicted a world with computers the size of iPhones, iPads and table top computers at a time when one computer was as big as a room. And how wild, to think about taking a computer to the jungle or the beach. But beyond that, computers would be more than ?small and super charged, but be powered with intensely networks of information. And for all his predictions, many which have manifested and exist today, his closing statement is yet to be designed. He says

Most importantly, ubiquitous computers will help overcome the problem of information overload. There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk in the woods than any other computer system, yet people find a walk among trees relaxing and computers frustrating.

Machines that fit the human environment instead of forcing humans to enter theirs will make using a computer as refreshing as taking a walk in the woods.

APIs and design today
Although APIs are tools for programmers, their context an implications for a better designed world are huge. The goal of this post is to initiate a higher?discussion about how APIs are influencing and shaping the future world in which we are designing now.?

• APIs open mountains of data making it accessible and usable for more people
• APIs enable programmers to quickly build useful tools and services for people
• APIs decrease programmers? reliance on hardware and specialized technicians
• APIs integrate with existing platforms and reduce interaction design friction for users

APIs innovating society

Years after Weiser?s article, Indiana University professor Yvonne Rogers,?critiqued?that ubiquitous computing, computers everywhere that is, should not be responsive but proactive. She said they should not simply just embedded in our environment and ignored, but powered in a way to improve our society. She says,

Instead of augmenting the environment to reduce the need for humans to think for themselves about what to do, what to select, etc., and doing it for them, we should consider how Ubi- Comp technologies can be designed to augment the human intellect so that people can perform ever greater feats, extending their ability to learn, make decisions, reason, create, solve complex problems and generate innovative ideas.

What we should do is leverage the tools and the data we have, pipe it into a streams that make it accessible and innovate and improve technology, society and our intellects.

In the same paper, she later writes about how better organization of data can empower programmers and designers to make better services for people. She presents her statement in a way that aligns closely to how we can relate APIs and experience design:

With respect to interaction design issues, we need to consider how to represent and present data and information that will enable people to more extensively compute, analyze, integrate, inquire and make decisions; how to design appropriate kinds of interfaces and interaction styles for combinations of devices, displays and tools; and how to provide transparent systems that people can understand sufficiently to know how to control and interact with them.

Smart, powerful and well designed APIs make it possible to stream data, integrate it in multiple platforms and give programmers and designer the power to transform never ending lists of numbers and letters into consumable, usable information to incite action.

APIs moving design forward

Let us in the design community broaden how we think about design and Design and experience design and interaction design and interface design and information design and graphic design.

Let us heighten our knowledge, step back and think about the world in which we want to live in and how we?ll create that to be true. Let us narrow the philosophical and task oriented gaps between developers and designers to create betters services and get computers out of our way.

By this I mean two things:

1. The first is for designers and developers to build products together. ?They should maintain their domains but iterate, code, sketch, design and build in tandem.
2. The second is for designers and developers philosophize and idea together. This phase happens far away from terminal and the Adobe suite. But by exploring the ideas of what can be made, how it can work and who it can help. What technology exists today, how can we move it forward and where can it fit in our society? What do we need to make? And more importantly, what can we take away?

The rich explorations about APIs in the design community are yet to be had. APIs have an intense relationship with a version of the future that has fewer visible computers, less interfaces, more?natural?people-to-people interactions and hopefully more walks in the woods. So yes, let us design the world in which we want to live today, but let us also build the tools we?ll need for the future.

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Very soon, tasks like designing screen flows and A/B testing button colors will be replaced by decisions about embodied interactions, ambient technology, systems integrated with each other and our environment. Building the future of technology will mean designing out today?s computer.?We?ll build tools that empower the intellect of society to move their own worlds forward.

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Notes

Friendly API services
IFTTT ? If This Then That
A visual, interaction design driven service that helps the non-programmer connects APIs to create customized services

Twilio ? Voice and messaging API
A REST?API with basic and advanced features to program communications services. Full disclosure, I also work at Twilio.

This simple but powerful API moves mountains, especially for visual ways to organize information. With a basic understandings of programming I made an interactive map.

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Related scholarly reading

The computer for the 21st Century by Mark Weiser Essay printed nearly 20 years ago?predicating?the future of calm computing reflected in our world today. Now known as the father of?Ubiquitous?Computing, Mark Weiser set the stage for us to create a world with computers both everywhere and no where all at once.

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?Moving on from Weiser?s Vision of Calm Computing: Engaging UbiComp Experiences? by Indiana University professor, Yvonne Rogers, writes an updated discussion and response to Weiser?s future world.?Rogers looks at the creative and constructive ways we can use?ubiquitous?computing philosophies to create engaging user experiences. ?Foundations of Embodied Interactions? by Paul Dourish Computer and social scientist at the University of Irvine brings new light to?discussions?about embodied interactions and?reduces?friction between people and physical devices and interfaces especially as they relate to daily activities. His essay offers an framework to help designers create interactions for design practice and analysis of existing tools.

Source: http://ninamehta.com/blog/how-apis-move-design-forward/

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