APIs are often treated as technical infrastructure, but the most successful APIs are designed and managed as products. In this session, I’ll explore how common product and design blind spots lead to poor developer adoption, even when the underlying engineering is solid.

Drawing from real product and platform work, this talk reframes APIs as user facing interfaces where developers are the primary users. We’ll examine how unclear mental models, inconsistent naming, confusing authentication flows, and weak error design directly impact time to first success, trust, and long term adoption.

The session will introduce practical frameworks product designers and product teams can use to contribute meaningfully to API design, including how to think about endpoints as journeys, errors as feedback, and documentation as onboarding experiences. Attendees will leave with concrete ways designers, product managers, and engineers can collaborate to build APIs that are easier to understand, adopt, and scale.

This talk is designed for product designers, product managers, engineers, and technical writers involved in building, shipping, or scaling APIs who want to improve developer experience and platform adoption.