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Status indicators

Status indicators are an important method of communicating severity level information to users. Different shapes and colors enable users to quickly assess and identify status and respond accordingly.

Overview

An indicator highlights a page element and informs the user of something that needs the user’s attention. Often, the indicator will denote that there has been a change to a particular item. They are frequently used to signal validation errors or notifications, changes, or updates. They can also be used on their own. Indicators are visual cues intended to attract the user’s attention to a piece of content or UI element that is dynamic in nature.

In this pattern we explore:

  • Choosing the best status indicators for your context
  • The different status indicator variants
  • What elements they are comprised of and how each element works to communicate

Choosing for context

In the UI landscape, examples of status indicators are everywhere. However this pattern will focus less on the components or patterns in which indicators tend to appear (notifications, inline errors, dashboards, and so on) and more on the urgency of the communication.

For ease of use, status indicators can be classified into levels of severity such as high, medium, and low attention. See more information on choosing between alias icons and outlined versus filled icons in the Status shapes section below.

Consolidated statuses

When multiple statuses are consolidated, use the highest-attention color to represent the group. For example, if the statuses of underlying components are green, yellow, and red, the consolidated indicator is red.

Cognitive load

Don’t use status indicators when no user action is necessary and status information is not important enough to highlight. Use plain text instead to avoid the overuse of status indicators. While we won’t go as far a prescribing a maximum number, more than 5 or 6 indicators begins to tax a user and makes it difficult to focus.

High attention

These indicators signal that user action is needed immediately—that is, there is an irregularity in the system, something malfunctioned, or a user needs to confirm a potentially destructive action. Some examples include alerts, exceptions, confirmations, and errors.

Icon
Name
Token
Description & usage
Critical
$support-01
Indicates a severe event that needs immediate attention;
Used for: critical situations, emergencies, urgent alerts
Warning
$support-01
Indicates an error (often inline) that needs immediate attention;
Used for: warnings, errors, alerts, failure
Warning alt
$support-01
Same as above
Misuse
$support-01
Indicates unavailability, an incorrect use case (especially in usage guidance) or a run that has been cancelled;
Used for: incorrect usage, unavailability, cancellation
Caution major
$support-caution-major
Indicates a threshold has been breached. Intended to alert a user before a critical event is triggered. Only use in conjunction with ‘Caution.’
Used for: major caution, serious situations, critical instability
Caution minor
$support-03, Yellow 60 (light-theme outline)
Indicates the existence of a non-service affecting fault condition requiring corrective action to prevent a more serious fault;
Used for: minor caution, prevention, instability
Caution inverted
Orange 50, Orange 40
Indicates a threshold has been breached; alerts a user before a critical event is triggered (only used in conjunction with ‘Caution.’)
Used for: major caution, serious situations, critical instability

Medium attention

Use these indicators when no immediate user action is required or to provide feedback to a user action. Some examples include acknowledgements and progress indicators.

Icon
Name
Token
Description & usage
Undefined
Purple 60, Purple 50
Indicates a value that is outside of an acceptable range or formatted incorrectly;
Used for: experimental work, outliers
Checkmark
$support-02
Indicates stability or the clearing of one or more reported alarms; implies no issues are present;
Used for: success, completion, stability, active states
Checkmark alt
$support-02
Carries the same meaning as the contained checkmark but is more often used in data tables and confined spaces;
Checkmark
$support-04
Indicates success at the end of a process (usually used as an interactive state within Carbon components, hence the color change);
Used for: success, completion
In progress
$support-04
Indicates a process has started but has not finished running (icon will be replaced by ‘checkmark’ or ‘warning’ icon when the status of the job is changed);
Used for: unfinished, running processes
Incomplete
$support-04
Indicates a job has started but is not yet finished (icon appears in Carbon’s Progress Indicator component);
Used for: incomplete tasks
Not started
$support-04
Indicates that a job or step (in Carbon’s progress indicator) has not yet been started;
Used for: upstarted tasks or disabled processes
Pending
$icon-02
Indicates a job has started but can not be scheduled due to insufficient resources;
Used for: indefinite holds

Low attention

Use these indicators when something is ready to view, for system feedback, or to signify that something has changed since the last interaction. Some examples include tooltip triggers that offer explanatory or added information, and passive notifications.

Icon
Name
Token
Description & usage
Unknown
$icon-02
Indicates that the status of an object is unknown;
Used for: unknown, undefined status
Help
$icon-02
Indicates additional support or FAQ content is available;
Used for: help, guidance, exceptions
Information
$support-04
Indicates additional (non-essential) information is available;
Used for: additional information, exceptions
Information alt
$support-04
Carries the same meaning as the ‘information square’ icon

Ingredients

To communicate their message, indicators can take many forms—they’re not confined to iconography. There are four basic elements that comprise Carbon status indicators. (Note: we won’t get into animation and sound in this pattern.) And for WCAG compliance, at least three of these elements must be present. Let’s look at these elements more closely before examining specific status types.

  • Symbols
  • Shapes
  • Colors
  • Type

Status icons

Icons are visual symbols used to represent ideas, objects, or actions. Ideally, they communicate messages at a glance, afford interactivity, and draw attention to important information. For example, using exclamation points for warnings, checkmarks for success, and question marks for help or unknown.

To standardize the icons that are used most widely in IBM product, we’ve included only the most universally recognized icons. Certain products may have certain modifications or most robust sets.

Examples of common status icons.

Examples of some of the most common status symbols

Status shapes

In this context, shapes refer to geometric figures like squares, circles, rectangles, and so on, as they are instantly readable even at small sizes. These shapes have strong visual associations that can be applied to help users succeed in using their product flows. For instance, shapes with straight lines and 90 degree angles usually convey structure and order—like the grid. While shapes with curves are friendlier and symbolize continuity and connection.

There can also be cultural associations connected with shapes. For example in traffic and wayfinding, hexagons mean stop, and upside triangles means yield. Using shapes incorrectly can disturb learned recognition patterns and confuse users, possibly hurting their overall experience.

A circle, a square, a diamond, a triangle and a hexagon

Example of the most common status shapes

Outline versus filled shapes

We offer two options that can be flexible for usage based on your team’s preference. Keep in mind that filled icons are more visible and tend to carry more weight, therefore they’re often used for high attention statuses. Outlined icons are more delicate and not as readily scannable.

In addition, the more line work an icon has—and the more breaks in those lines—the more difficult it is to use a filled icon. For this reason, some product teams may occasionally mix in an outline icon with a filled icon. This is okay but for the most part, designers should try to be consistent throughout the product or application. At the very least, designers should avoid mixing outlined and filled indicators on the same page.

Alias status icons

In several cases, we offer multiple shape options for one type of status indicator. For example, ‘warning’ ‘help’ and ‘information’ status icons have multiple variants to convey similar or exactly the same information. Often times, users of certain products have grown accustomed to say, a hexagon instead of a circle to convey a critical warning. Or a team perhaps wants to go the extra mile and offer yet another differentiator for accessibility. Although consistency is always the goal, there’s no need to avoid differentiation to accomodate user preferences. Whichever style you choose however, avoid mixing throughout the UI.

If an alias that your product frequently uses has been removed from the set and you can make a case for the importance of including it here, please let us know.

Status palette

The status palette includes all of the colors that can be used to reflect status. Typically, red represents danger or error, orange represents a serious warning, yellow represents a regular warning, green represents normal or success, and blue represents passive notifications, usually involving additional information and workflow progress. We’ve also included gray and purple to add more depth to the system. Gray indicates drafts or jobs that haven’t been started, and purple indicates outliers or undefined statuses.

01. Red 60da1e28
02. Green 60198038
03. Orange 50eb6200
04. Blue 600f62fe
05. Yellow 30f1c21b
06. Purple 608a3ffc
07. Gray 306f6f6f

Extended status palettes

This palette is only for added contrast accessibility when using yellows and oranges. It’s not a part of the IBM brand palette and it’s also not included in the v2 color release (that is, it’s not in ASE, Sketch kit palettes, and so on) because it’s for very selective use in data visualizations and certain status indicators. Do not use this palette in any other manner in your layouts.

Yellow 10fcf4d6
Yellow 20fddc69
Yellow 30f1c21b
Yellow 40d2a106
Yellow 50b28600
Yellow 608e6a00
Yellow 70684e00
Yellow 80483700
Yellow 90302400
Yellow 1001c1500
Orange 10fff2e8
Orange 20ffd9be
Orange 30ffb784
Orange 40ff832b
Orange 50eb6200
Orange 60ba4e00
Orange 708a3800
Orange 805e2900
Orange 903e1a00
Orange 100231000

Variants

There are at least four possible ways to implement status indicators:

  • Icon indicators
  • Badge indicators (with and without numbers)
  • Shape indicators
  • Differential indicators
VariantUsageContext
Icon indicatorsUsed any time the layout offers ample space and the content requires maximum attention. They require an icon, a shape, a meaningful color and a descriptive inline label.Icon indicators are widely used in Notifications, Progress indicators, Data tables, task lists and dashboard widgets.
Badge indicators (with number)Useful when a count of new or updated items is available, and it is important for the user to know the number of updates.Most often used in notification panes in the header, and used in conjunction with avatars or icons.
Badge indicators (without number)Useful when new or updated items are available and the number of notifications is unknown or irrelevant to the user. The dot badge is also more compact and discrete.Most often used in notification panes in the header, and used in conjuntion with avatars or icons.
Shape indicatorsUseful in smaller spaces or when users need to scan large amount of data.Most often used in lists, dashboards, data tables, data visualizations, and network diagrams.
Differential indicatorsUseful when users are monitoring differentials in large lists of statistics and when anything other than type would be too obtrusive.Most often used in financial dashboards for highlighting deltas or other types of data visualizations.

Anatomy

Like a button, a status indicator’s text label is the most important element, as it communicates progress. By default, Carbon uses sentence case for all button labels.

Text labels, column labels (or a legend, when inline labels aren’t an option) are strongly recommended.

Anatomy images of the five types of status indicators

1. Icon indicator

A. Text label
B. Symbol
C. Shape
D. Color

3. Badge indicator (no number)

A. Shape without number
B. Symbol
C. Color

5. Differential indicator

A. Text label
B. Symbol*
C. Color (optional)

2. Badge indicator (number)

A. Shape with number
B. Icon
C. Color

4. Shape indicator

A. Text label
B. Shape
C. Color

*Differential indicators must have either a ‘+’ or ‘-’ sign, a caret, or an arrow icon to indicate positive or negative values.

Formatting

Icon indicators

Icon indicators require an icon, a shape, a meaningful color, and a descriptive label. Easily recognizable icons can make very effective communication tools and greatly improve scannability, especially with large amounts of content. Icon indicators are widely used in notifications, progress indicators, data tables, task lists and dashboard widgets.

Carbon notification component

Notifications are the most prevalent example of this type of status indicator.

Type pairing and alignment

Icon indicators are sometimes referred to as ‘contextual’ status indicators as well because they are associated with a UI element or with a piece of content. As such they should be shown in close proximity to that element.

There are also cases, especially in data tables and lists, where the column heading or row label may provide context that is additive to the inline label. When very common ‘stop light’ associations are present, as in the following example, it may not be necessary to explicitly label an icon as ‘warning,’ or ‘stable’ — as these interpretations are widely understood in product. However it is good practice to clarify the status intention in the text label.

Aligned status indicator icons.

Do left align icons and type in lists and data tables, regardless of whether you’re using the responsive grid or spacers.

Misaligned status indicator icons

Do not push icons out of alignment with label length. In this case, where the status indicators are flush right, the two digit labels are pushing the icons out of alignment.

Badge indicators

Badge indicators let the user know that something is new or updated. A badge status is displayed over a ghost icon button, usually in the header, to indicate an active notification and is cleared after the user acknowledges the notification. Depending on your use case, the icon button can open a new page or launch a modal, pane, or flyout.

Example of badge indicators in a global header

Badge statuses with numbers are usually used for global notifications.

Badge status with number

Numbers are used in conjunction with a badge status when a count of new or updated items is available and it’s important for the user to know the number of updates.

Badge status numbers can only be used in conjunction with the large icon button because with anything smaller, the icon gets covered. In very rare cases badge number may exceed two digits.

Four icons with badges that included numbers ranging from one to three digits. The last badge has a plus.

Badge status without number

A badge indicator with no number is used when a new notification is available and the number of notifications is either unknown or irrelevant to the user. The dot badge is less noticeable than the numbered badge, but still draws the user’s attention to the icon button.

Shape indicators

Shape indicators combine color shape and text to create a standard and consistent way to indicate the status of a device, feature, or version. Icons are not present. These shapes are also seen in certain diagrams and data visualizations, for example network diagrams.

The shapes are only the most basic geometries, derived from the larger icon containers, so they can be easily discerned at small sizes. Shape indicators are not available in outline because they are so small. The only situation in which you would use an outline is to ensure contrast accessibility for yellows.

The table below is a first pass at establishing a standard lexicon for symbol indicators within IBM product.

Icon
Name
Token
Description & usage
Critical
$support-01
Indicates a severe event that needs immediate attention;
Used for: critical situations, emergencies urgent alerts
Warning
$support-01
Indicates an error that needs immediate attention;
Used for: warnings, errors, failure, deprecation, cancellation
Caution
$support-03, Yellow 60 (Light-theme stroke)
Indicates a non-service affecting fault condition requiring corrective action to prevent a more serious fault;
Used for: minor caution, prevention, instability
Caution inverted
Orange 50, Orange 40
Indicates a breach before a critical event is triggered (only use in conjunction with ‘Caution small’);
Used for: major caution, serious situations, critical instability
Stable
$support-02
Indicates stability or the clearing of one or more reported alarms; implies no issues are present
Used for: success, completion, stability, active states
Undefined
$support-undefined
Indicates a value that is outside of an acceptable range or formatted incorrectly;
Used for: experimental work, outliers
Information
$support-04
Indicates additional information is available (can be used adaptively if a gap arises);
Used for: additional information, wild card
Incomplete
$support-04
Indicates a process has started but not finished running or a user task is unfinished;
Used for: unfinished, running processes
Draft
$icon-02
Indicates that a job has not been started, draft status of a job or a disabled process;
Used for: unstarted tasks, drafts, disabled processes

Type pairing and alignment

Shape indicators are also ‘contextual’ status indicators. Like the status icons above, assets have been created for the shape indicators that take into account optical alignment. Do not attempt to create these shapes yourself. Use the approved shape indicator provided for you in the icon library.

As with the icons, choose the appropriate canvas size depending on the size of the status label with which it is paired. 16px symbols are optimized to feel balanced when paired with both 12px and 14px IBM Plex. Since shape indicators are most often reserved for small usage scenarios in product, we would advise you to use full status indicators with 16px IBM Plex.

IBM Plex type and shape indicator pairing example

Shape status canvases should be placed 4px from the beginning of the text box.

Example of a contextual shape status indicator

Example of the status label directly next to the shape

Legends

Because shape indicators don’t have the added recognition of an icon, it’s even more important that they are paired with a status label. Alternately, the designer can provide the user with a legend if a status label isn’t an option.

Example of a legend paired with a shape indicator

Example where the status symbol indicator depends on the legend at the top of the page

Best practices
Do place shape indicators before labels; they can be placed after other text only if there is no character count variation.

Do place shape indicators before labels; they can be placed after other text only if there is no character count variation.

Do not place shape indicators after the labels to avoid pushing them out of alignment

Do not place shape indicators after the labels to avoid pushing them out of alignment.

Do use shape, color, and status labels to improve scannability.

Do use shape, color, and status labels to improve scannability.

Avoid using only color and status labels to differentiate your content.

Avoid using only color and status labels to differentiate your content.

Differential indicators

Differential indicators often help users understand the movement or changes in information. They are especially useful when users are monitoring differences in large lists of statistics and anything other than type would be too obtrusive. Examples include the common convention of color-coding stock symbols in an investment account if their price has changed substantially. Designers also rely on them to highlight deltas in data visualizations.

Although typographic indicators can be used without an icon as long as a minus or a plus sign is used, they are most often paired with arrow or caret icons in our system.

Caret and arrow icons

Color

Differential indicators are either displaying a positive or a negative value. Color is optional in these situations as long as the value has either a ‘+’ or ‘-’ in front of it, a chevron icon, or an arrow icon. Unless the data involves temperature, positive values are represented by the green spectrum and negative values are represented by the red spectrum.

Examples of differential indicators

Differential indicators are most often seen in dashboards.

Accessibility

Accessible design not only helps users with disabilities, it provides better user experiences for everyone. The most common form of color blindness is red/green color blindness. The inability for some users to distinguish between red and green means that products cannot simply rely on color to show status. As a result, the status system relies on three key elements; color, shape, and symbol.

For example, the critical icon is not just “red”, it is the sum of the following elements.

Color = Red
Shape = Circle
Symbol = \
Text = Critical


Example of accessible status indicators

Do include at least three out of four indicators of status to meet accessibility requirements.

Example of inaccessible status indicators

Avoid designs with less than three indicators of status; using solely color and symbols is inaccessible.

Status notifications

Don’t use notifications that dismiss on a timer for critical or emergency messages.

Some users with disabilities need more time to read or interact with messages and timed toasts may not provide sufficient time. WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.2.4 (AAA)

Users should be able to manage or limit non-critical notifications.

This gives users the control to reduce the number of distractions or disruptions they receive, which is particularly helpful for users with cognitive limitations. WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.2.3 (AAA)

References

Feedback

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