We have updated the project dashboard a few times in the past to show either the allocated bandwidth or the settled bandwidth but both of these approaches have caused confusion and has led to some support tickets for our team. We wanted to ask you all for feedback on this topic. We have a few options we could go with for this project dashboard
Show allocated bandwidth
allocated bandwidth is something specific to our product, users may not be familiar with this concept, this would also show more bandwidth than what the customer might actually use so they might be confused about their usage.
Show settled bandwidth
settled bandwidth is what the customer actually pays for, this is almost always going to be delayed a few hours to a few days so if the customer downloads a 1 GB file and immediately goes to check the dashboard they most likely will NOT see any usage, this can confuse the customer.
show both allocated and settled
we would need explain our bandwidth concepts to the users, they may not be familiar.
4 something we havenāt thought of yet
This is why we are asking for feedback hehe help us solve this problem for our customers.
Iām not exactly an end-user person. But as far as I understand, the āallocatedā bandwidth is like blocked funds on a credit card? If so, Iād say that if even credit card companies put the effort to explain what it is, and why it is there, then it shouldnāt be a problem to Storj either with a user base that is likely more technical than an average credit card user. Use credit card analogies and youāll be fine.
Besides, if both numbers affect the user, then both should be presented.
I like the above example of the credit card company. I frequently have a āpendingā amount shown which reduces my available balance when an amount is held/blocked, along with the transactions which have been confirmed.
The power company bill is one of the most notoriously hard to read in the UK so Iām not sure StorJ should try to emulate them.
Option 3 for me. More detail with tool-tip explanations should make it the easiest to understand.