A toggle is a switch that can be flipped from one state to another. It is commonly found in everyday technology, computing and programming devices and applications. This is because it allows users to change settings or modes and provide a user experience that is more flexible.
While toggles can be useful in certain situations they are not without their challenges. When not used correctly, they can actually do more harm than good. This is especially true when a toggle button doesn’t include an “on” or “off” text, which forces users to rely on other visual clues, which, when not designed properly, can cause confusion and misunderstanding.
Toggle buttons don’t need to display an “on” or “off” text, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. In fact, toggles can do a lot of good when they don’t have an “on” or “off” text, because they provide the opportunity for designers to be creative and add a unique twist to a button that will set it apart from other buttons.
Toggles are often used in forms or as part of other content elements to make them more user friendly by allowing users to control their data entry or display preferences with an easy click. They are also a great tool for making content easier to read on a mobile device by providing the ability to collapse and expand lists. Creating toggles with Carbon is a straightforward process and there are a variety of pre-built options to choose from.
In addition to their obvious use as a form of user control toggles can be used in a variety of ways to help with navigation and organization. In particular they are well suited to organizing and highlighting important information in a list or table. Toggle is a very powerful tool that can be used in a variety of different contexts, but it’s important to understand and think about how you will use it before adding it to your site.
One way to leverage toggles is to use them to perform A/B or multivariate testing. In this approach a Toggle Router is added to a system and at runtime it will consistently send each individual user down one of two codepaths. This allows you to make data-driven optimizations to things like your ecommerce checkout flow, or the Call To Action wording on a button.
Savvy teams view their feature toggle inventory as carrying a cost and try to minimize the number of flags in production by proactively removing them when they are no longer needed. This can be done with a variety of techniques such as adding a task on the team backlog for toggle removal when they are first introduced or by using features like Canary Release or Champagne Brunch that allow teams to create a new version of an app with a Feature Toggle flipped off while keeping the existing production code active (and a backup configured with the feature flipped On).
