- https://doi.org/10.1109/vl-hcc65237.2025.00028
APICANVAS: Graphically Designing Web APIs
- Oct 7, 2025
- Griffin Tomaszewski +2 more
Web APIs are essential in modern software systems, with OpenAPI as the standard specification for describing RESTful APIs. Despite widespread adoption, OpenAPI specifications are mainly textual documents that become verbose, deeply nested, and difficult to navigate at scale. Current tools like Swagger Editor lack graphical design capabilities, impeding effective prototyping for large teams and non-technical users. To address this gap, we present APICAnvas, a visual design tool enabling users to interact with OpenAPI specifications through both editable YAML and graphical interfaces with bidirectional synchronization. We evaluated the tool with 13 participants across two tasks: creating new APIs and modifying existing ones. Results show 83% successfully created APIs from scratch and 75% correctly updated existing APIs, demonstrating the tool’s effectiveness across diverse experience levels.
