Information architecture questions for breadcrumbs, links, overview title

[finnlewis]

From discussion at our tech group drop-in meetings.

Should the last breadcrumb be removed when in Guide pages?
Should we be able to avoid having an overview page at all?
Should we add an option to omit the overview link in the navigation?

[finnlewis]

It would be good to get some discussion and advice on this from IA / UX expertise.

[helencalderon]

Hello. User research at ECC here. We conducted 2 rounds of user research early March on our LGD build. 10 participants - 5 on mobile, 5 on desktop.

Should the last breadcrumb be removed when in Guide pages?

We found:

• Some users expected the last page to appear as text at the end of breadcrumbs and when it was missing didn't know they were on a sub-page within the guide. Related to this a few participants didn't know they were on a sub-page on LGD because they read the guide title and not the guide page navigation.
• When clicking on the last page in guide page breadcrumbs a few users expected this to take them to the overview page within the guide.
• However, when on Overview we saw 1 user click onto the breadcrumb to navigate to a new page. This just refreshed the page.

We decided:

• The guide page link in the breadcrumb will take users to the overview or first page in a guide
• The guide sub-page will appear at the end of the breadcrumb in plain text
• Except when in the overview page the main guide page will appear as the last page in plain text

Should we be able to avoid having an overview page at all?

We found:

1. Our getting married guide provided a list of steps within the overview.
   For first-time visitors going to the guide from internal search — landing on the overview (vs a different page within the guide) provided greater context around the process and users felt more reassured.

2. On applying for a Blue Badge, we have a guide for supporting documents. The overview had no information. Some users immediately went into the next page about evidence all applicants need and didn’t look at the additional information/sub-pages. An overview may provide additional context that might nudge applicants to provide the additional evidence they need to support their application.

We decided:

To review how we were using guide pages.

• Where guides may contain information that users don't need in the same journey, we'd move these into service landing pages and information pages.
• Where guide contain information users need in the same journey we'd include an overview.

Should we add an option to omit the overview link in the navigation?

This isn't something we've explored or considered yet.