SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: question about breadcrumbs
Re: SIGIA-L: question about breadcrumbs
From: Jason McDonald (jmcdonald_at_mstar.net)
Date: Tue May 22 2001 - 10:10:04 EDT
That's a good point. Unless your site is rather hierarchical, I would
question a breadcrumb as a valid method of navigation. But I do claim that
if a page has two legitimate paths, each relatively as important as the
other (admitidly a rarity in a hierarchial site, but they do exist), why not
recognize the validity of the user's path and provide them the breadcrumb
tracing their trail? We may take a lot of pride in our categorization of
information, but at the same time a lot of our decisions are arbitrary.
Even with user testing, what would you do if your results showed a good
segment of users choosing each path? If we do provide them a breadcrumb, do
we provide one that they almost certainly won't understand represents the
page's context, or do we provide one that they might at least recognize as a
group of pages they've been to before?
For example, if I have a site on sports with the following two sections:
Sports > Sports Heroes > Famous Baseball Players
Sports > Sports Heroes > Famous Football Players
Where do I put a page about Bo Jackson? Why not both places?
BTW--I'm sure this isn't the common experience, but on average most users
I've worked with do know what a breadcrumb is (even the Grandmas). They may
not know the
"proper" name, but when asked what it is they give a pretty good definition.
Jason
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Fahey" <Chris.Fahey_at_raremedium.com>
To: <sigia-l_at_mail.asis.org>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 3:32 PM
Subject: RE: SIGIA-L: question about breadcrumbs
> > I don't know of any studies, but my personal preference would be to
> > construct the path that the user followed to get to the
> > content. While there may be more work involved on the back-end,
> > I think it saves the most confusion overall. Hansel and Gretle
> > would have been in a lot of trouble if
>
> Hansel and Gretel would have been much better off if their breadcrumbs
> led *straight* back home, not on a twisty turning path that retraces the
> random wanderings of two dumb kids. You're welcome to add a feature to
your
> web site where people can see all the crazy places they've visited while
> exploring your site, but I think that most people would rather just know
how
> to get straight home, or at least how to get to to a page that will help
> them find stuff.
>
> Set aside the word "breadcrumbs" and ask: would a user of your site
even
> want a tool that would let them retrace their path? Remember two things
> regarding breadcrumbs:
>
> 1) The word is exclusively a industry insider term. Grandma doesn't
> know that that little row of links is called "breadcrumbs" and therefore
has
> no expectation that they represent a trail to go back along the route she
> took.
> 2) It's a crummy (pardon the pun) metaphor. You don't have to make
> breadcrumbs work like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs just because of the
> bad metaphor.
>
> I think of breadcrumbs (as they are traditionally implemented) as a
tool
> for users to reach nodes above them in a heirarchy. In other words, how to
> get "home". "Home", of course, can mean the site's home page. It can also
> mean the home page for the section of the site the user is in. (example:
> Amazon.com has a Home page and a DVD Home page).
>
> Breadcrumbs are useful in a heirarchically organized site to display
what
> section you're in, and what the parent sections you're in. A perfect
> breadcrumb example is a news site:
>
> Home > Sports > NBA > Eastern Conference > {Knicks Lose Again}
>
> ...or a catalog site:
>
> Home > Books > Non-Fiction > History > European History > {French
> History}
>
> If I'm looking at one of these pages, the breadcrumb examples I've
shown
> above are useful because I can now find other pages that I might be
> interested in by clicking on a page somewhere upwards in the heirarchy. I
> can choose how far up the heirarchy I want to go. All of the pages listed
in
> each breadcrumb trail are helpful "home" (hub, node) pages.
>
> If your site does not present to the user a substantially heirarchical
> organizing scheme with "home" page nodes at each level of the heirarchy
> (like a newspaper with sections that have front pages, or a catalog with
> product groupings that have feature pages), then breadcrumbs (as I
describe
> them) are probably not useful.
>
> -Cf
>
>
>
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