Notebooks
Helping developers understand and control compute cost
Background
Notebooks are developer environments used to quickly write and deploy code, requiring compute resources.
What are notebooks?
Average notebook utilization: 8.5% (low)
50% of notebook cost came from notebooks with <5% utilization
Developers lacked guidance to right-size resources
Problem
UX challenges and solutions
Challenge one: Developers couldn’t easily see whether resources were over- or under-utilized.
Solutions:
Prominent utilization summary at the top of the page
Granular visualizations at the individual notebook level
Challenge two: Utilization data couldn’t be served in real time.
Solution: Clear empty states and content design explaining data lag
Individual notebook resources utilization
Cost and usage summary empty states
Early visualization explorations
Final visualization design
Research
Qualitative discovery interviews
Evaluative concept testing
Approach
All participants validated utilization metrics would influence right-sizing decisions.
Participants expressed strong preference for seeing both cost and usage, at the page-level summary and individual notebook levels.
“After seeing maximum usage, I’d first ask myself if there was a way to reduce the resources I selected. Then, I would try to pause or stop the notebook so I’m not running it too long. Or, start a new one with lower resources.“
Findings
Results and impact
Median notebook cost reduced by ~15%
Average utilization increased by 7%
Resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual savings (PM estimate)