5
Arfmann
5y

I have a question about UI/UX
I have multiple settings that user can toggle on/off.
Those settings are used to customize notifications (it's an app that saves notes to notifications)
I was wondering if I should use checkboxes or switch

Comments
  • 2
    I'd probably use chekboxes. Though mainly because of the width of the layout. Switches would be a bit wider. What's good about switches though is that they convey more of an on/off function.
  • 3
    @Jilano Users often know what they expect much better than designers do... Being able to articulate their expectations can be another thing altogether.
  • 5
    I'd prefer checkboxes. With a switch, colour blind people will always be wondering whether it's on or off while a checkbox conveys that meaning without relying on colour.

    @Jilano red/green in particular is bad choice because that's the most frequent colour blindness.
  • 0
    @Fast-Nop Never thought about color blindness when it comes to switches. I guess I've thought that the right state is always on. But when I think about it I hate it when switches barely changes color. Makes me confused and forces me to double check its state.
  • 2
    @Fast-Nop If the contrast is high enough color-blind people should be able to see which side of the switch is active and use the common convention of "left=off, right=on" to determine which options are enabled, unless someone was devious (and stupid) and reversed the meanings somehow.
  • 3
    @Jilano With traffic lights, you always have red at the top - and in many countries, colour blind people are not allowed to get a driving licence. But that's not a reason to limit accessibility unnecessarily in other domains like apps.

    WCAG 2.1 clearly has the requirement to never convey meaning via use of colour alone. Colour plus something else is OK though.
  • 0
    I'd say it depends on your context. On laptop/desktop, I'd use checkboxes, while on mobile/native mobile a switch. But I guess this is up to your taste
  • 0
    Do what your platform's guidelines say. https://stackoverflow.com/a/...
  • 1
    @powerfulparadox That's the point - switches need an additional convention that is not visibly part of the UI. That's why I consider them as inferior to checkboxes.

    But I guess in today's totally botched up smartphone world where you have to access a function by putting all five fingers and then doing galaxy style spirals inwards and outwards, usability just isn't important anymore.
  • 1
    @Fast-Nop You forget that checkboxes also have that same convention (why not have an empty box mean selected? it's a convention, too). It might feel more obvious for checkboxes, but it's fairly well established these days for switches, too. I wouldn't consider the switch to be much worse (if any) than checkboxes, and they have the potential advantage of disentangling the collection of settings from the potential perception that they are a heirarchical list (which checkboxes can imply).
  • 1
    If it's mobile, I'm assuming so with the notifications....

    Use switches with labels embedded s

    Left side = off
    Right side = on

    If you want to be sure users understand what's going on, have the "on" turn green and "off" turn gray or something so it's feels faded out.
  • 0
    Neither,
    on touch open a dialog box which contains yes, no and close where no will be preselected, green and highlighted after clicking it close the dialog box without setting that bool true, make yes red and keep size of yes less than no. Finally after clicking close whole app should close. You can also display banner ads between yes and no keep no above and yes below the ads.
  • 1
    I think checkboxes should only be used when selecting out of a list of options to then perform an action with, like "Select which photos you want to delete" or "Choose the subjects you want to study", so toggles.
  • 0
    I'd also expect checkboxes to need to be confimed with a button. Switches are more like a state that's active immediately. Also checkboxes feel more like they belong together somehow, although this definition is weird: installation routines often end with checkboxes saying "view eula", "start x" etc.
    On mobile and modern windows I'd go with switches, but check your platform guidelines. They try to provide a similar usability across apps and OS.
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