My Experience with the ‘Sarah Button’ Situation
Alright, let me tell you about something that happened recently. We were working on this small project, just an internal tool, nothing fancy. There was this one particular function we needed, and it needed a button on the interface. For some reason, during a brainstorming session, someone jokingly called the concept the ‘Sarah Button’. Don’t ask me why, the name just stuck internally while we were figuring things out. It wasn’t its official name, just what we called it in chats and stuff.
So, my task was to actually start putting this button into the user interface. I spent a good chunk of a morning playing around with it. First, I sketched out a few ideas on paper, just rough shapes and positions. Where should it go? What should it look like? Basic stuff.
Then, I moved to the design tool. I whipped up a quick digital version. Picked a colour, chose an icon, wrote some temporary text on it. It was really just a first draft, maybe version 0.1, you know? Just something to look at. My plan was to refine it later that day or the next morning.
Here’s where things went sideways. I wanted to save a snapshot of this draft for my own reference. You know how you sometimes take screenshots to compare later? Well, I did that. But instead of saving it locally or sending it to myself, somehow, I must have pasted it into our main team communication channel. I didn’t even notice it immediately. I think I switched tasks, maybe went to grab a coffee.
About half an hour later, my computer starts pinging more than usual. Messages started popping up.
- “Hey, what’s this new button?”
- “Is this the final design for the Sarah feature?”
- “Looks interesting, when is this getting implemented?”
Turns out, my very rough, very unfinished button design draft was out there. People were seeing it and assuming it was the real deal. It wasn’t supposed to be shared yet, especially not in that raw state. It kinda ‘leaked’ out before it was ready.
So, what did I do? First thing, damage control. I jumped back into the chat immediately. I explained clearly that it was just a super early draft, a work-in-progress screenshot shared by mistake. Big apologies and all that. I quickly deleted the image from the channel to avoid more confusion.
Next, I had a quick chat with my immediate lead. Just explained what happened, owned the mistake. Thankfully, they were understanding. It wasn’t a huge crisis, more of an awkward situation that created unnecessary noise.
To manage expectations, I then spent about an hour creating a super basic, grey, placeholder button in the actual development environment. Just something functional that showed where the button would live and what it would do, without any fancy design. I committed that simple version. This way, the team could see the progress on the functionality side without getting hung up on a design that wasn’t final.
In the end, it blew over pretty quickly. We had a little team discussion later about being more careful with sharing WIP stuff. The actual ‘Sarah Button’ got designed properly over the next week, went through feedback, and was implemented smoothly. But that little incident? It was a good reminder to always double-check where you’re pasting screenshots or sending messages, especially when dealing with unfinished work. A simple mistake can definitely make your day a bit more complicated than it needs to be.