An evaluation of look-ahead breadcrumbs for the WWW

Abstract

Breadcrumbs have long been a part of hypertext navigation systems. Although the early implementations were true to the breadcrumb metaphor of marking the specific path a user had taken [1], over time the Web convention of using a list of links to represent the location of the current node has become commonplace [5]. Popularized by large directories like Yahoo!, breadcrumbs can reinforce that users are indeed in the “right place”, educate them on the website’s structure, and help them interpret the other links on the page which are contextual to the node’s location. If users feel disoriented [11, 12], they can select one of the breadcrumb links to go to “higher ground” and hopefully proceed with accomplishing their goal. Studies by Bowler et al. [3] and Teng [14] suggest that breadcrumbs are most useful for large and hierarchical sites. The study we report here investigated more powerful breadcrumb navigation constructs within the Open Directory Project. We hope to answer the question if these experimental breadcrumbs can improve performance in key navigation tasks.