Breadcrumb and Page title for multiway accessible pages

Question

I couldn't find a proper solution and need your advice.

In my system, there are many pages that users can work on. A page can be accessible in three different ways.

For example, we have a page called Action Management. Users can access this page through:

1. Opening the Hamburger Menu, clicking on a menu item called Working Pages, and a page with Miller columns will open. Users can click through categories to access this page (General > Management > Action Management). In this case, the page title is "Working Pages," and the breadcrumb is: Working Pages > Action Management.

2. Adding a quick access card on their editable Startpage/Dashboard. User clicks on a card and page opens. Here, the page title is again "Workpages," and the breadcrumb is Working Pages > Action Management.

3. Opening the Hamburger Menu and clicking on the menu item. This will show same breadcrumb and Page title like in step 1 and 2.

So, the same page can be accessed in three different ways. But breadcrumb is same. Problem is we use same link for the page.

I think this creates confusion and false info on breadcrumb.

Do you think in all ways, Page title should be "Action Management" and different breadcrumb for each page access?

My solution:

• For 1: Show "Action Management" as page title, and breadcrumb: Working pages>General>Management>Action Management
• For 2: Show "Action Management" as page title, and breadcrumb: Startpage > Action Management
• For 3: No breadcrumb, only page title is "Action Management"

Thanks for suggestions!!

Answer 1

I think that this problem would be solved if your designed system had a hierarchical structure.

Breadcrumbs are used for clear navigational path, and displaying different breadcrumbs for the same page will definitely confuse users.

Looking from UX point of view, there should be the same path no matter how the user accessed the page.

It's important to keep in mind that it's also not always necessary to show an entire path to the page (in some systems it might get extremely long), so a work around is to display only parent category before current:

house_icon / ... (indicator that there are other parent categories) / parent-category / current-category

Also, what breadcrumbs will you display if an user will go to the page via a sent link, because as per my understanding you're using the same link for the page or have I misunderstood your approach?

Answer 2

The first thing that you need to do is your Information Architecture so you will be able to identify your problem and see if you're duplicating pages or names in the structure of your page. As fakermaker mentioned breadcrumbs are used as a navigational aid, so the breadcrumb should be the same if you're accessing the same page. Think your problem as a parable, in your computer your downloads folder will always have the same path no matter how you accessed it.

This book can help you go deep on this topic. https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/information-architecture-4th/9781491913529/

Happy designs 🖖