A toggle is a user-interface component that lets users update preferences, settings, or other types of information. It’s simple and easy to use, but when it’s not implemented well it can cause more harm than good. When designing a toggle, remember to provide direct labels, use standard visual design, and deliver immediate results. This will help your toggle buttons be effective in all contexts, regardless of whether they are used to make a small change in one part of the application or to switch between different states in another.
Toggles are also used in the context of experiments (A/B testing) to make data-driven optimizations. When an experiment is rolled out to all users the toggle can be used to consistently send each user down either path to determine which has the highest impact on a given KPI. This technique allows us to quickly evaluate multiple configurations of a feature and choose the best implementation without risking any user experience or business value.
In a more general sense, Toggles are often used to enable features in production that may not be ready for wide rollout, or to provide an alternative experience to a limited group of users who need to test a new feature before it goes live. This is referred to as Canary Release or Champagne Brunch and can be a great way to test new features in a controlled environment without affecting everyone.
Savvy teams view the inventory of Feature Toggles as having a carrying cost and seek to keep this stock under control. To this end they typically use some type of centralized config system, often an existing application DB, to manage these toggles and their configuration. They also build out an admin UI to allow operators, testers and product managers to easily modify and test the Feature Toggle configurations.
When a toggle is set to “On” it’s important that a team test all of the behaviors that will be enabled when this toggle is flipped to “On.” To ensure that any bugs that were introduced into production due to untested configurations are caught before they get into the hands of customers many teams also perform tests with toggles that are intended for future release flipped to “Off”.
The key consideration with a Toggle is that it must provide clear visibility of its state. This requires that designers evaluate the societal and cultural implications of color, contrast, and other visual signifiers for the state of the Toggle. This is particularly important when a Toggle is intended to be displayed for a global audience.
