August 13, 2003

Breadcrumbs

I like breadcrumbs. That is, those nifty links that often appear on sites that show hierarchy: Home > Section 1 > Sub-section 3 > Page. I think they look good and provide an effective navigation tool.

But, I could be wrong.

At least according to a study published by Wichita State's Usability News. They found that breadcrumbs were not widely used. They did, however, seem to have an impact on the user's mental model.

In this study, we designed the tasks such that navigational efficiency would be optimized through the use of a breadcrumb trail. Despite this, only 6% of the page clicks were accounted for by the breadcrumb. While 40% of the participants used the breadcrumb trail, usage was lower than that of other navigational means, such as the main navigation bar, the Back button, and embedded links.

I'd love to see some "real-world" results. Mining site logs should tell us if breadcrumbs are being used or not.