Button

The button component is made up of a surface, label, optional icon, and optional indiscriminate loader — and depending on the needs of the design, comes in three sizes large, medium and small then are in varying levels of emphasis: high emphasis, medium emphasis and low emphasis. In very specific use-cases a compact button can be used when space is limited.

Note: Theoretically two icons can be placed within the button, but in practice only one icon would be shown at a time. The trailing icon is used for showing loading status. When showing the loading status icon, the button text should also change to provide information to the user about the loading status. When this occurs, hide the leading icon. 

High emphasis button

Serving as the highest emphasis call to action possible, this level of button should only appear on screen once. The main differentiator for this level of button is the background color is filled and should demand the highest level of attention in the experience. 

1. Surface/container
2. Leading icon (optional)
3. Label — Button (optional)
4. Trailing icon (optional)

Medium emphasis button

Serving as a medium emphasis call to action, this level of button can appear as many times as needed throughout an experience. The main differentiator for this level of button is the transparent background color — and while it still appears as a button providing affordance for the user that an action is possible — the visual treatment allows the button to blend in with the surroundings just enough to not compete with a high emphasis button for immediate attention. 

1. Surface/container
2. Leading icon (optional)
3. Label — Button (optional)
4. Trailing icon (optional)

Medium emphasis buttons, when appearing on a dark surface, receive a dynamic color treatment (see theming section).

Low emphasis button

Serving as the lowest emphasis call to action, this level button can appear as many times as needed throughout an experience. The main differentiator for this level of button is the initial lack of treatment to the container. This visual treatment allows the low emphasis button to fully blend into the experience and not compete with any medium or high emphasis buttons present.

Low emphasis buttons, when appearing on a dark surface, receive a dynamic color treatment (see theming section).

1. Surface/container (transparent)
2. Leading icon (optional)
3. Label — Button (optional)
4. Trailing icon (optional)

Compact button

When an action is needed to be tucked into a tight spot, and a standard size button would just be too big (bull in a china shop situation), and some surgical placement is needed so as to not disturb the carefully arranged layout, a compact button comes to your rescue! Fix it to the top corner or vertically align it with a set of other UI elements within a header for a nice little way to clear a form, reset a group of controls, or collapse a section of content.

1. Surface/container (transparent)
2. Label — Caption

Usage — button copy

As a few general rules of thumb for calls to action:

• Sentence-case capitalization (unless the FI has chosen in Theme Builder to have all-caps button type treatments)
• Use common human language; but full and complete sentences are not necessary
• Begin with a strong action verb
• Provide clear understanding of what interacting with the button will do (If icons are only present on the button without a text label, the icon should universally signify what the button will do if clicked)
• Be as concise as possible — consider keeping text limited to 20 characters or less
• Copy should never wrap to two lines
• Copy should always be centered within the button unless an icon is used
  

There are two distinct patterns when it comes to the placement of buttons within an experience: F-pattern and Z-pattern. 

F-pattern placement

The F-pattern is the natural way to progress through content in an unconstrained container. The user will go through the content line by line, arriving at a call to action at the end.

Center aligned

In some instances it makes sense to center align the button if the content and layout call for a centered experience. Only center align content if it’s easily scannable. A good rule of thumb is to ensure copy does not wrap to more than two lines. Once copy becomes a paragraph of information, center aligning makes it difficult for the human eye to successfully track between line breaks.

Mobile vs widescreen

In mobile experiences, layouts are often designed in single columns, and the button should span the full width of the screen unless intentionally designed to be responsive to the button label (see notification component as an example).