A toggle is a switch that can be set to either the on or off position. This type of switch is commonly used in technology devices and software programs to turn features on and off, or to select different display modes. Toggles are often used in responsive design to control how components will be displayed based on screen size and other factors.

In software development, toggles enable teams to implement new features without creating a code branch and having to go through the testing and release process that would be required under more traditional waterfall approaches. The team can use feature toggles to hide features in production while the dev teams work on them in a code sprint, and then they can push those toggles out to production so that those new features are available to users as soon as possible.

There are a few things that teams should keep in mind when using toggles to deploy new features. First, it’s important to limit the scope of each toggle to a single feature. Adding multiple toggles with different scopes can lead to confusion for the user, and it can be very difficult to troubleshoot issues when a set of toggles are not working as intended. Second, it’s important to be very clear about what is enabled when a toggle is flipped to the on position. This can be accomplished by adding a text on/off description to the toggle, or by choosing high contrast visual signifiers that make it very obvious that the toggle is currently set to an On state.

Finally, it’s very important to have a solid process in place for pruning toggles that are no longer needed. Leaving old toggles in your code can lead to maintenance and performance issues, and it’s best to create a task on the team’s backlog for clearing out idle feature toggles once they have run their course. This is particularly critical when you are using experiment toggles to perform multivariate or A/B tests, since you want to be sure that you are consistently sending each user down one code path or the other and not biasing the results by skewing the cohorts based on whether certain toggles are set to On or Off.

While we’re on the topic of toggles, it’s also worth mentioning that they can be a bit problematic when not designed well for accessibility. By their nature, toggles use high contrast visual cues (on/off colors) to signal their state, and some users have color vision deficiencies where these signals are not as effective. Additionally, the fact that toggles are not as visible as checkboxes or radio buttons can be frustrating for users with limited mobility or cognitive issues.

Despite these issues, toggles are still very useful for rapidly deploying and testing features. They just need to be deployed carefully and wisely, and it’s vital to have a process in place for vetting when they are the right solution.