Developing best practices for API reference documentation: Creating a platform to study how programmers learn new APIs

Software developers use application-programming interface (API) documentation to learn how to use the features of software libraries. How quickly software developers learn to use a library's features determines how quickly they can apply those features in a software application. Recent studies have shown that API documentation is, unfortunately, not always as helpful to software developers as they need it to be. This paper studies the prototype of a tool and a method that are being developed to help technical writers identify the elements of API reference documentation that help software developers complete programming tasks. The tool and method described in this paper use a remote user-assessment platform, which enables researchers and technical writers to study the effect that document design variations have on a large and diverse audience. Such an approach can help technical writers identify new best practices for writing effective API documentation.