Breadcrumbs
by Administrator
We’re working on a new web app called ImageKind and as part of that project I’m responsible for developing workflow, user interface and development progress. While designing the shopping cart, I was curious (hey, we are called Curious Office) as to whether or not I should incorporate breadcrumbs into the site to aid people as they moved through the check out process.
I found this interesting study which did the most thorough analysis I’ve ever seen on this subject. You are welcome to read for yourself but the basic summary is this:
“Breadcrumb users were found to use the Back button less often than users who did not use the breadcrumb; however, no differences were found in the efficiency measures of total pages visited, navigation bar clicks, embedded link clicks, or time to complete the search tasks. It is not known if all participants understood the function of the breadcrumb as a navigational tool.”
I think I’ll be leaving breadcrumbs out…
Comments
Considering the breadcrubs could compete with tags in the IK layouts, I would agree. The tags metaphor might be confusing on its own, but at least that would lend itself to exploration for users, instead of backtracking and lessening the exposure.
As far as browser bookmarks go, Although I do like del.icio.us, I find the ‘synchronize bookmarks’ firefox plugin to be invaluable to synching my multiple machines – especially after a rebuild. Perhaps if I got used to using a different organization method I could get used to del., but for day-to-day use, I like knowing my top-ten links will be in the same toolbar regardless of desktop/pc/mac/account.
Save the breadcrumbs!!!
Where does it make sense?
Anywhere that you have hierarchical taxonomy, like on Amazons Stores, or Yahoo Directory.
Where it doesn’t make sense?
Anywhere that you have only flat hierarchy (like Tags), or where the workflow is in steps.
What type of breadcrumbs for ImageKind?
Let’s guess some like:
- All Art >> Photo Art >> Black & White >> Marcelo Calbucci >> 2005 Collection
Should you use it?
I think what the study says is that it makes little difference, however, I find that you cannot assume that users think the same. A big point on SampaSite is always providing 2, preferably 3, sometimes 4 ways for users to do the same thing. The important point is to make those ways almost “invisible” for those that don’t care. Never clutter your UI, but if you use soft colors on *alternate* methods of navigation I find it is better.
Ah, Chad the disappearing developer…
For my “top ten” links I simply load all ten regular pages I track every day as my “home page” in Firefox (e.g. every time I launch firefox it loads all tabs I track regularly.
While I had used the synching Firefox bookmark tool, I don’t anymore because using a (bookmarked) URL in the first place assumes a connection to the Internet. Thus, if I have a connection to the Internet, I have a connection to Del.icio.us and if I have a connection to Del.icio.us I have all my machines effectively in synch AND backed up to a server that is more likely MORE redundant and backed up than my own. Also, I could download all del.ici.us links to my machine if I wanted to anyway although I don’t find much need to do so.
Marcelo, I guess I agree. Some form of breadcrumb makes sense for very hierarchical situations. Probably not in cases where I had been thinking about it…like…the four stages of a shopping cart checkout process.
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