A toggle is a switch with two positions—on and off. It is a form of binary control that can be used in hardware and software settings. It’s similar to the way that a person can toggle between screens as they video chat with two friends at once, or use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Tab to move between programs on their PC.
Using a toggle can make it easier to organize features for users, as it provides a clear visual cue about how to navigate a product. Toggle switches should be designed in a way that emphasizes movement and state descriptors to ensure clarity for users. It is also important to consider societal and cultural implications of using color for the toggle switch states, as not all cultures use the same symbols for on/off.
For example, using the color red for on can be counterintuitive to people that associate it with stop signs or traffic lights, and may cause confusion. In addition, it is critical that the toggles be positioned on top of the UI and have clear labeling to ensure the user can easily see them.
It is important that toggles are designed to be as stable as possible, so they can be deployed in a production environment without any issues. To that end, we encourage developers to follow the same best practices for creating feature toggles as they would any other code in their projects. This includes avoiding the use of if-else statements in favor of a more atomic approach to creating toggles, and always having an action oriented label attached to the toggle. Additionally, it is highly encouraged to use a consistent method of managing feature flags and their toggle configuration across an organization. This is commonly done by moving the toggle configuration into some sort of centralized repository (e.g. an existing application DB) accompanied by the build-out of some form of admin UI that allows system operators, testers and product managers to view and modify the toggle configuration.
