Skip to main content
User Experience

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

5
  • 1
    I think you can simplify your decisions by breaking two things apart. 1-How the user got there, 2-What are the parents of what you are currently seeing. For solving 1 I would use breadcrumbs, for 2 I would see how e-commerce application do it. E.g. Razors can be in several categories: beauty,self-care,tools, ... Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 11:56
  • In one such system I use, the designers made a history strip where navigation hierarchy would usually be. It's fine and works well, it's only badly designed because it's hard to distinguish the elements from each other. However, that's a mistake of graphics and not of concept IMHO. Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 12:24
  • 2
    Why does the user want to know where he is in the overall structure? Is it because they want to reach this item again (navigation)? Is it because they want to know what related items there are (discovery)? Is it because you think they want to know where everything on the site is, and are trying to guess at the whole information architecture from taking a look at the parts/product pages (mental map generation)? Breadcrumbs in a tree-structured site are useful for all three, but with a more complex site structure, you might need a different solution for each (if you want to support all three) Commented Feb 5, 2014 at 12:46
  • I'd suggest something (maybe a pull-down draw or sidebar) that puts your current item/term in the centre and arranges its parents around it, with their parents around them, similar to what Music Map (music-map.com) does. Commented Mar 19, 2014 at 18:57
  • NeilDawson: Maybe it would help if you give some examples. Commented Apr 22, 2014 at 2:15