Breadcrumb trails.

February 06, 2003 | 1 Comments

Being a fan of breadcrumb trails and their use in Web navagation and wayfinding, I found Breadcrumb Navigation: An Exploratory Study of Usage very interesting.

If you don’t want to wade through the whole study, the discussion near the bottom pretty much sums it up.

My thoughts? Well, I like breadcrumbs, even though I, so far, have no real user-based evidence to show that they are effective, at least not as navigation. I’ve noticed a small percentage of the people I’ve tested in the past use them for wayfinding.

I use them myself and my thinking is that they are very simple to implement, don’t ususally detract from the design or function of an information rich site and if nothing else — if they don’t confuse they can only help.

Filed under: Web General