Why can’t we just make the button smaller?

“Why can’t we just make the button smaller?”

“Well, it’s not that simple.”

“What do you mean? Just make it smaller!”

“What about the layout re-flow?”

“The layout what?”

“Yeah. The layout is designed to adjust itself to fit the constraints of the screen its running on. If the button changes its size, the elements around it would change their positioning.”

“Can’t we just make it non-responsive for the button or something?”

“We could hack something together but it might break the layout in certain screens. It was built to carefully handle all the different screen sizes our app runs on.”

“Can’t QA just let us know if it breaks?”

“Our automated test suite mostly checks functionality and not the UI layout. We’d have to make sure to manually test it for multiple screen resolutions and sizes.”

“Fine. We’ll have it tested manually. Can you make it smaller then?”

“We also have to account for accessibility.”

“How does this impact accessibility?”

“Making it smaller will make it hard to tap. So we’d need to increase the touchable area to account for it.”

“Can’t we just make the touchable area bigger?”

“We can but then the area might overlap with the touchable area of another UI element and that would cause an issue where the other element becomes hard to interact with”.

“Can’t we just increase the spacing around the button?”

“We can, but then it wouldn’t match the design spec visually. There’d be more spacing between the button and its neighbours which would look odd.”

“Guess I’ll have to talk to the Interaction design folks. Can we make it smaller after they approve?”

“You’ll also need to talk to the Copywriters.”

“What for?”

“The button was tested for the CTA string with all the different languages we support. Changing its size means we’ll have to test it again. If the strings don’t fit anymore, we’ll have to ask for new ones from the Copywriting team.”

“Can’t they just make new strings?”

“They can. They’d have to make sure the new strings fit our brand voice and account for RTL languages and stuff but sure.”

“I’ll talk to them as well I suppose. Please tell me we can make it smaller after that.”

“There’s also the animation.”

“The animation?”

“You’ll need to talk to the motion design team to make sure the button loading animation is still fine. They’d designed it for the original size so they might have to rework it if the container is smaller.”

“Sigh. Can we do it after the animation is done?”

“Might also wanna talk to marketing. They have screenshots with the current button all over our landing pages.”

“Of course. How can I forget marketing?”

“And also data science. They do some user finger position tracking or something and this might affect their algorithm.”

“Fine! Is that everyone?”

“Well…”

“What is it?”

“The CEO made the very first design for it back when the company started in a garage so he might have some strong nostalgic feelings about it.”

“He’s the CEO! Why would he care about this one little button?”

“According to Forbes, it’s because ‘he’s a billionaire genius savant who will change the course of human history but yet is obsessive about every tiny detail of his vision.’”

“Fantastic… Is that it?”

“For now? Yes.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“The people you talk to will probably give you more people to talk to.”

“So… I have to talk to 6 teams, then potentially even more teams and the CEO of the company to the make the button smaller?”

“Yup.”

“Is it always like this?”

“Always has been. Welcome to the team.”

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