After last month’s Dropbox API review, we’re now publishing the conclusions of usability testing SoundCloud API. Tests have again been conducted by API Usability Testing, which offer remote API usability testing performed by a broad range of software developers with different experience and qualifications.

SoundCloud API usability tests were performed by developers with a range of experience of five to twelve years working with all the major programming languages. All tests were performed using Ruby on different platforms.

Participants were given five tasks and reported on time spent and difficulties found while implementing the API client. The most reported problems were related with the lack of specific Ruby documentation the implementation of the SDK not being fully object-oriented.

Another point raised was the fact that the API documentation doesn’t have specific pages for each one of the methods. Instead, the documentation is a single page containing all the information.

Original test results

The original detailed test results, as reported by API Usability Testing can be found at the following links:

• tester #1 (MS Windows 7);
• tester #2 (MS Windows 7);
• tester #3 (Apple OSX).

Each report provides detailed information about the tasks performed and also the code used to perform different tests.