[Recorded Webinar] Breaking The Mold: Creating Task-Oriented API Documentation

Mark Wentowski says we ought structure docs to reflect how devs use APIs to solve problems rather than relying on arbitrary labels such as 'concepts,' 'integrations,' 'recipes,' or 'API reference'.

In this recorded web presentation, API Docs specialist, Mark Wentowski, explores innovative approaches to creating documentation that are aligned with developers' needs and habits.

Topics covered:

• Traditional vs. Task-Based API Docs:
  

  Examining standard content like API references and code samples and their limitations regarding ambiguity, navigation difficulties, and misalignment with user goals.
  

• Developer-Centricity:
  

  Tailoring docs to different developer types (systematic, opportunistic, pragmatic) and integrating concepts directly into task descriptions for better utility.
  

• Efficient Strategies:
  

  Implementing adequate redundancy, side-by-side content-code layouts, intuitive navigation, context-aware semantic search, and considering single-page docs to enhance user experience.
  

• Strategic Implications:

  Emphasizing the need for custom information architecture and exploring content strategies for developers and non-developer stakeholders.

About the presenter:

• Mark Wentowski helps API developers around the globe explain their solutions to various audiences. He primarily works with SaaS companies delivering web-based, developer-to-developer conceptual docs for web services (i.e., APIs), libraries, and other software products, including deployment and configuration guidance for IT and DevOps engineers, user guidance for data scientists and engineers, API and command references, tutorials, walkthroughs, sample apps, and best practices guides.