Wire, we constantly strive to provide the most advanced security and superior user experience. We understand how important it is to be efficient and productive, and how an intuitive design contributes to that. We are happy to introduce significant improvements to the buttons you see in Wire calls — making it easier for you to toggle mute, video and screen sharing during calls. In this article, you’ll read all about what changed and why we made these decisions. We heard your feedback that in-call buttons were confusing, specifically how difficult it was to know whether someone’s microphone was muted during a call. After some research, it surfaced that the active ‘on’ and inactive ‘off’ states were not clear enough, hence causing confusion about the current button state and what they will switch to. We tried on different designs and eventually made improvements to three main areas — iconography, labels and colors.
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Iconography
Consistent use of crossed-out icons now indicates ‘off’ and an uncrossed icon indicates ‘on’. In all cases, the icon accurately indicates the current system state.
Colors
In addition to the icon, a white highlight color is also used to signify that the button is in it’s active ‘on’ state. This makes it easy to tell at a glance the state of your microphone, video or speaker.
Labels
With the iconography and colors clearly indicating button state, text labels further serve to add clarity to the function of each button.
Help us improve
This is just the start of many improvements we have planned to make calling on Wire smoother and easier for you. In order to ensure that we’re going in the right direction, we rely on your feedback to guide our roadmap and to build the security-focused features you need. Please take our most recent survey or share any suggestions you have.
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