Product for Designers

Decision Cards

Make interface decisions you can defend in any design review.

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Product for Designers · Q1 2027

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Breadcrumbs or Back

Do people jump up levels, or just retrace their steps?

Use Breadcrumbs when

Content lives in a hierarchy three or more levels deep, and people jump up more than one level at a time.

Signs it fits

  • Three or more levels of nesting
  • People arrive mid-hierarchy from search or links
  • Jumping up two levels at once
  • Folders, categories, docs

Use Back when

A shallow, linear path where the previous screen is almost always where people want to go.

Signs it fits

  • One or two levels deep
  • Mobile drill-down
  • Linear flows, list to detail
  • The previous screen’s title makes a useful label

The numbers

Two levels deep: a back button is enough. Three or more, or people arrive mid-hierarchy from search or links: add breadcrumbs. Label back with the destination’s name, not just ‘Back’.

Say this in review

Half our traffic lands on a document from search, so they’ve never seen the folder above it. The breadcrumb tells them where they are and gets them up in one click.

When it flips

The exception

On mobile, a full breadcrumb trail truncates badly. Show only the parent (‘‹ Projects’) and keep the full path one tap away in the header.

See it work

Make the call

Card 12 of 15

A help center: Category → Section → Article. Most visitors land on articles from Google. Breadcrumbs or back?

Navigation
The rule

Breadcrumbs show where you are. Back shows where you were. Deep hierarchies need both.

From the lesson “Way finding”

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