Breadcrumbs Research Plan

April 2020

Background

The U.S. Web Design System was built to help the federal government design and build better experiences for the American public. The system is guided by the following principles: start with real user needs, earn trust, embrace accessibility, promote continuity, and listen.

As part of the continuous improvement of the system, the team is developing a process for evaluating and adding new features. The next feature we’re exploring is the breadcrumbs component. Breadcrumbs are generally used to identify where a visitor is within a site by listing out the hierarchy for the current page.

Goals

Gain a better of understanding of developers’ and designers’ perspectives and practices for using breadcrumbs in their work.

Questions

Breadcrumbs have been around for a long time and have established conventions. How are designers thinking about them and using them today?
What is their perspective on common debates (and why)? For example, including the current page in the hierarchy or not.
How do they handle responsive considerations, particularly with long content?
What implementations challenges are there with breadcrumbs? (particularly with common CMS tools like Drupal)

Methods

Comparative Analysis: See how the component is currently being used on other sites.
Heuristic Evaluation: Review existing expert guidance on how to use the component.
Stakeholder and user interviews: Talk to designers and developers about how they use the component and what some of their challenges are.

Participants

For the initial round of interviews:

3 designers
2 developers
1 content strategist

Timeline

Research activities for these methods will be completed by the end of the current sprint, ending 5/1.
Findings will be completed by the end of the following sprint.