Toggle is a simple but powerful user interface element that allows users to update preferences, settings, and other types of information. However, it’s important to use toggles thoughtfully — they must be clearly labeled and deliver immediate results. If not, they can create confusion for the user and create frustration if they require multiple clicks to activate.
Toggles are typically small buttons that display a different state, such as “on” and “off.” They can be found on the edge of pages or in navigational elements and appear with a distinct color to indicate their current state. They often contain a text label that provides additional context. While there are many ways to design toggles, it is important to choose visual signifiers that are clear and consistent across the application. These include high-contrast colors for states, and careful consideration of societal and cultural implications. For example, using red for the on position could be confusing to users in some cultures who associate it with stop signs or traffic signals.
Our e-commerce company decides to conduct an experiment with its configurator. They want to test two different suggestion algorithms and determine which one performs best. To do this, they add an experiment toggle to the production configurator and split users into two cohorts with a modulo when they load it. After three weeks, the team has conclusive data: More customers complete their orders with algorithm B than with algorithm A. So they remove the experiment toggle and deploy that algorithm to all users.
The benefit of toggles is that they allow teams to release new features in a controlled manner. Using traditional waterfall development methods, these features would be written on separate code branches until they were ready for beta testing or market deployment. But with toggles, these features can be merged into the main release and hidden behind a toggle until they’re ready to go live.
Feature toggles are also useful for Agile development processes. By hiding features under toggles, teams can perform the entire development, QA, and testing process on code that is already integrated into trunk. They can even deploy the new release to a small percentage of their user base before making it available to everyone.
When using toggles, it’s important to remember that they should only control a small scope of your product. It’s tempting to use them for large swaths of the codebase, but this can be confusing for the rest of the team and lead to bugs down the line. It’s also difficult to debug a set of features that are configured in a variety of different ways. Instead, use toggles sparingly and only when they will be useful for your team.
