Donald A. Norman is big in design, partly because his work on “The Design of Everyday Things.”
This time, Norman put some effort discussing how intelligent machines should interact with human. This book is largely about UI, but I feel the concept is the same for API design as well. API is the human interface of the lower level software component, anyway.
The book is interesting, and provides many examples of failed and successful interactive design. If you don’t have time to read the whole book, the author also provides nice summary of his ideas:
Design Rules for Human Designers of Smart Machines
• Provide rich, complex, and natural signals
• Be predictable
• Provide good conceptual models
• Make the output understandable
• Provide continual awareness without annoyance
• Exploit natural mappings
Design Rules Developed by Machines to Improve their Interactions with People
• Keep things simple
• Give people a conceptual model
• Give reasons
• Make people think they are in control
• Continually reassure
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