A toggle is a user interface control that allows users to manage the state of something, such as content or a view. Toggle switches have two positions, on and off. They can help users update preferences, settings, and other types of information. They can also be used for simple, iterative A/B testing.
In addition to their straightforward functionality, toggles have several other benefits that make them a great UX tool:
Feature Toggle
Feature toggles (also known as feature flags) allow engineers to deploy features to specific groups of users without redeploying the entire system. This can reduce the risk of deploying new code to production and gives engineering teams an opportunity to test a feature in real-world environments before it’s widely deployed.
Toggles are particularly useful for experimenting with feature upgrades that might be time-consuming and resource-intensive to perform on a large scale. For example, an e-commerce company may decide that implementing algorithm B will take a significant amount of resources, but they don’t want to make the change live for all users until they can be sure it will work with their data. The engineering team can then use toggles to temporarily hide the feature until it’s ready for beta testing or to make the upgrade permanent.
When a toggle is deployed, it’s important to provide clear and consistent messaging about its purpose. This includes using consistent labeling and positioning across the application, as well as ensuring that toggles are accessible for users with disabilities. Toggles should also have a clear visual signifier of their current state and be updated when the current state changes. This should be reflected in the color of the toggle and its text, and it’s a good idea to consider societal and cultural implications of color choice as well as state descriptors like “on” or “off”.
One drawback to using toggles is that they can become long-lived, leading to what’s called toggle debt. This bloats the codebase and requires more management overhead. To counteract this, it’s best to plan for regular reviews of toggles and establish a process for pruning them as soon as their lifecycle has run its course.
It’s also important to limit the number of toggles a team uses and keep them as lightweight as possible. This can be done by building a toggle removal process into development processes and incorporating it into the product roadmap. Additionally, it’s important to ensure that toggles are deployed in as small of a scope as possible to minimize the impact on the system and the complexity of managing them.
