Console Analytics

When I joined the AWS Console team, we had a visibility problem. Millions of developers used the console daily, but we were flying blind—no reliable data on which features resonated, where users got stuck, or how changes affected real workflows.

The existing solutions didn't fit. Third-party trackers raised security concerns for enterprise customers. Server-side logging missed the nuance of frontend interactions. And any solution had to respect strict performance budgets—the console couldn't slow down for analytics.

I was tasked with building something new from scratch: a lightweight, privacy-conscious tracker that could capture meaningful signals without impacting the user experience. The solution leveraged MutationObserver and PerformanceObserver APIs to passively collect data, combined with custom throttling via aws-event-bucket-throttle to batch events during idle time.

The result became the default telemetry foundation across Console surfaces—giving product teams a shared language for measuring adoption and performance without per-team instrumentation overhead.