The term DX or developer experience may sound a little technical and unfamiliar, but to simplify things we can go to its family member UX! The user experience or UX, which you don’t need to be a professional engineer to understand, is very similar to DX; In fact, DX is the same as UX! Of course, with the difference that the user of your product, project, API, etc. is a programmer in this sense.
The importance of DX is often overlooked unless the API provider feels threatened by its competitors. But DX is a very important concept; Follow the article to find out why and learn more about the term developer experience.
What is developer experience?
It was said that DX is actually like the same user experience, except that the user is the product of a programmer. DX is generally the feelings and experience of a developer, or the general perceptions of a developer, when interacting with a technical product and API. For example, when a developer uses your product (API or software) and is your customer, or when a developer designs your product, we are actually dealing with the developer experience.
In fact, it’s all about optimizing developers’ workflows, processes, workspaces, and more so that they can have a meaningful and enjoyable experience. The easiest way to understand the concept of developer experience (DX) is to use the concept of user experience, which you are probably most familiar with! DX also prevents developers from wasting time dealing with APIs. Simply put, DX helps programmers and makes things easier for them.
What are the important foundations of developer experience?
There are three important pillars of the developer experience: usability, findability, and credibility. Also worth mentioning, (these three items are also on Peter Morville’s famous list of UX pioneers for user experience.) We will explain more about the importance of each one below.
Usability means how easy it is to use your product (API or software, etc.). But findability is how quickly and easily users (developers) can find the functionality they want. And the last one is credibility, which generally refers to the user’s trust in your product to solve their problems and is related to the long-term vision.
Why is developer experience (DX) important?
DX are kind of important pillars in your work, especially when your product has many competitors. As mentioned, the customer of your product in this discussion is the developers who have limited time. On the other hand, the developer’s bad experiences when faced with a complex API have a negative impact on the work output, and the developer’s waste of energy and time in this encounter causes him to be attracted to competing companies.
On the other hand, the developer who is your customer does not know enough about the details of your work and product, and with the help of good DX, you can provide trust and a correct understanding of the product to the developer. Simply put, with a better developer experience, the developer works in a better mood and creates better products, ultimately increasing your profits as a business owner. To better understand the importance of DX, you can read more about the work of the developer experience team.
What are the general elements of the developer experience?
The developer experience has pillars or pillars that define when the experience is positive and when it is not. Below are some of the pillars that we will examine each one:
Function
The foundation of a developer’s experience is as much a role as the tools it provides to perform an activity. Good interface and strong marketing etc. cannot necessarily hide bad performance. DX function is much more important.
Stability
Along with functionality, the stability of power and efficiency of your product is also important. Therefore, it is necessary to fix product errors quickly so that users are not harmed and they do not turn away from your product.
Ease of use and clarity
Quick and convenient access to documents, parts, etc. increases user interaction and satisfaction with the product. It is also necessary to have a complete view of the consequences and history, etc. available.
What is the work of the developer experience team?
Considering the importance of developer experience, it is better to have a team for DX. The developer experience team has many responsibilities, which we’ll cover below:
Writing technical documentation
Technical documentation includes release notes, knowledge bases, user manuals, and any type of writing that describes the use cases of a product or service. The developer experience team should provide documentation of the development team’s processes and workflows that help standardize; In addition, it is important when hiring developers. Technical documentation is also very useful for external developers who use your app’s API.
Selection of development tools
The development experience team must choose the tools necessary for the development team to do the work. They should choose the tools based on the performance and ease of use and the necessary standards so that the work process goes right.
Workflow definition
In addition to standardizing the tool, the developer experience team should also standardize the workflow! Ultimately, the goal of this work is to streamline processes and make it easier for developers, which ultimately increases product efficiency.
Choose a programming language
Choosing the right programming language is very important in the work process. A programming language can also help with better troubleshooting. Therefore, to facilitate the work, one of the tasks of the developer experience team.
How to provide better DX to improve the developer experience?
Now that you understand the concept and importance of the developer experience and the duties of the team involved, you can have a better understanding of how to deliver better DX. In general, to improve DX, you need to make the process of using, understanding and debugging the API easier. Also, observing and improving DX affects the quality of codes and increases the speed of development. Additionally, if DX is followed, new members will progress more easily. In the following, we will describe a few things that will help this process.
Focused time
The simplest and most basic thing to improve the development experience is to make sure your developers have enough time to do their work. Considering the time-consuming process of software development, etc., the importance of paying attention to time is revealed. To improve the time situation, it is enough to pay attention to complaints about lack of time.
Full documentation
It is necessary to note down all the things to improve the work. A complete note can actually provide you with a complete database. In addition to the completeness of the classification documentation and the order of its data, it is very important for access and better understanding because the developer will study the documentation to understand the API.
Compliance with standards
It was said that the task of the developer experience team is to standardize tools, programming languages and workflows. Adherence to standards helps to better communicate the developer with the product.
Choosing the right tool
Tools are very important for the work process and sometimes the development of a product depends on the tools used. Therefore, it is very important to choose the right and standard product, as well as to document related matters.
Specify instructions
Specifying the guidelines or the so-called Code of Conduct is important for the order of work and as a result the convenience of developers. Especially in group work, the importance of instructions increases. For example, when several people write code, it is easier to find and review similar codes with the help of guidelines.
Deprecating old methods instead of removing them
If you are going to change the method, it is better to do the process more slowly and instead of removing the methods, you can make them obsolete. Deprecations help developers adapt to new methods more easily.
Reduce non-coding steps
Non-code steps are things like calling to get services, registering to use the product, etc. These things slow down and disrupt the work process of the programmer; So reducing these steps helps simplify API usage. Also provide SDK with different programming languages. If you believe that this process will take your time and resources, put them as an open source project in web hosting services so that the programmers will also help in fixing possible bugs and your work process will be developed.
Build empathy and reduce recovery time
If the work is done in a group, it is better to prepare a suitable work space. Also, the cooperation and empathy of the team members will help to improve the work result. On the other hand, with the arrival of a new developer, it must take time to reach full development, and this time can be reduced with clarification and support.
Increased support
To improve the work, it is necessary that there is support from users. The best case is that the support team is there to answer users’ questions and the support team can be reached at different times.
In general, there are many ways to improve the developer experience, some of which we have mentioned. By observing these things, the work of developers and programmers will be easier and will ultimately help to provide a better product and, as a result, more profitability.
What are the costs and benefits of DX for the company?
As mentioned earlier, DX is a pillar of development work and its importance increases when you want your product to compete with other products. But improving DX, which is very important, will also involve costs for the company. Of course, this cost will be insignificant considering its long-term vision.
We got acquainted with the concept and importance of developer experience (DX) and we also knew that by following DX and some cases, the function and customers of the product (software or API) will increase and the profit of your company will increase, but DX will definitely have costs for the company, but Finally, the importance of DX is huge. I hope reading this article was useful for you. Please share your opinion with us, your comments will help us improve our work.