Organizing APIs with Postman-UX Critique
Create a simple collection of few requests from the PokeAPI using Postman.
User Persona
Critique Objective
Map & Improve the experience of creating a collection using Postman.
Graphical representation of each step is at the end in form of journey map.
Journey
Step 1: Create a collection.
In the Postman app “New” & “Add New Collection” were quite prominent and self-explanatory so I knew where to get started.
I want to add here that most of the people use Open API and might want to import Open API instead of creating a new collection to get started faster. To help those users making the “Import” button more prominent (increasing contrast) will help.
Moving on, it asked me to name my collection and add a description. I think the size of the description field can be improved, and adding a little padding/breathing space around the description would make it look cleaner.
The collection got added to the left navigation. However, it didn’t select/open the collection on its own, which was a little against my expectation.
Step 2: Add Request.
Now that I had a collection, I wanted to add my first request to it. I found it in “more option”, which maps accurately, in my opinion.
It opened up a modal where I was asked to name my request and add a description to it.
Step 3: Make Base URL Variable
Once I had my first request in the collection I added base URL. Now that I had to create multiple requests with the same Base URL I choose to make it variable in the production environment. That “eye’ icon acted as mystery meat to me though.
Step 4: Send Path Variable
Then I added endpoint path after the base URL & tried it which returned “Not Found”. I wish I had been provided with more context here.
So I did a little research and found out I’ll have to add a colon (:) and remove brackets first.
So it worked out, and I got a successful response.
Here I’d say there should be a way to add path variables through UI, possibly in the URL bar or below query parameters.
Another thing that I noticed was that the `Key` for the path variable was a field but not editable which was misleading. It should either be disabled or editable in place.
Step 5: Save Responses
Next, I tried different values to save different responses. At this step, there were a few things which got me confused. I’ve mentioned them below.
Step 6: Add more requests
Similarly I added few more requests to the collection.
So this is how I created the Pokedex (Postman collection) using Pokemon API. I also previewed the API docs to see how the endpoints/requests were looking.
Final Verdict
There were a few things that got in the way but overall the experience was fine. Good for power users but the experience for newbies can be improved.
Following is the Postman collection I created.
