Comment by adnmcq999 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adnmcq999 | Hacker News Reader

I’m a sales associate at Home Depot - I have to look up items all the time. I usually just google “item Home Depot”

This usually gets me the item or a similar item. If the item is similar and not what they want, I have a tree categorization and I can usually go up a level. The interesting problem w the Home Depot I think is figuring out how to categorize and when to make a category. For example “screws” is an obvious category in which there will be sub-categories and parameters on which to filter like “length” or “color” (I use this a lot). What filter parameters to have is also interesting as is how to display the results. Most items are returned in a list form but, annoyingly, some types of items have their own splash page that is kind of unique to that item.

If the item is weird, it might be really hard to categorize, usually these go into _____ accessories. Overall I think Home Depot does a good job w the search except the UI is laggy as someone mentioned and as they also mentioned the location setting is ALWAYS WRONG. FIX THIS NOW! Every. Single. Time I have to check if an item is in stock at my store, it puts me in the wrong store and I have to manually change it myself. Am I just a moron or is there really no way to set it and forget it?

You would probably find it interesting to take a look at McMaster-Carr's website for an example of the hardware-store UX done right.

They do the categorization thing really well, there's "catalog pages" that reference item categories, and item categories can be attached to multiple different catalog pages, and items are categorized by tons of different metrics (length, diameter, thread pitch, head shape, material, color...).

And while that's a pretty generic statement - there's lots of stores that let you filter by material or color, after all - it's all executed SUPER well. I often use it just to get a broad idea of what hardware actually exists/what the terminology I need to search for elsewhere.

https://www.mcmaster.com

I knew someone who worked on their system and apparently it's all COBOL on the backend too lol. I'm sure there's some modern tech on the frontend but I bet all the inventory stuff/etc and the warehouse terminals are running on COBOL.

I have never worked even close to any kind of industrial procurement, and I still know about McMaster-Carr, just because of how much people love using their website.

That's some good UX right there.

I'm sure it's a massive boost to their bottom line too. Once you get people on the site, and once they start putting together their order, odds are good they're not going to go elsewhere. The UX literally makes the sale for them.

(of course not every shopping cart converts to an order, and people still order things you don't have elsewhere, etc. But getting people on the site and engaged is half the battle, assuming you don't give them a reason to shop elsewhere.)

I agree that their website is great. For the olds like me, we had just as big a love affair with their printed catalog before the website. Their shipping was on a different plane also, long before e-commerce changed the shipping game. They have always taken UX seriously. I had an engineering internship where the president had a saying: "If you can't design a machine from the McMaster-Carr catalog, you aren't an engineer."

How about rockauto.com?

I mean, I can drill down to exactly what I need easily.

> How about rockauto.com?

It looks old and outdated but it's so easy to use

Weirdly, they don't sell whole replacement transmissions? I get they're heavy and the core return thing, but it's a big-ticket item and it'd be nice to be able to price-shop the local mechanics on it.

Not only the website is perfect, I’d say the same about delivery and customer service.

Uhh on McMaster I think I need a flow meter with range around 0.3 L/min since I’m designing something new and not replacing, and there are separate check boxes for 0.25-0.5, 0.2-1, 0.1-0.6, … etc. with 3 different units mixed in.

If you know exactly what you need, then yes. But if you’re messing around on home depot needing like a 3 7/8 “ish” screw but-maybe-a-4-will-do the McMaster system would stink.

While true, this is unfortunately not unique, I see the same issue on (eg) Mouser/Digikey/Arrow for electronics parts.

Obviously in some cases it can be replaced by a range slider, but there's also cases where it really can't. In some cases it's the part itself that has the range - like let's say a pump is designed to produce a flow rate of 0.5-5 gal/min, you can't express that with the usual range slider.

I guess what you really need is an "inverse range slider" where instead of saying "I want a connector that carries at least 5 amps but not more than 15" you say "my project needs a flow rate of 2.5 gpm, what parts have that value within their range".

But I mean... compare the McMaster-Carr site to Home Depot, or Target, or whatever, and it's just a breath of fresh air. Like, if inverse-ranges are the biggest thing you can complain about, mission accomplished ;)

Flow meters need an operations range though. So any of those ranges would work for your application.

But trying to find a screw on Home Depot or Fastenal .. ugh

I would be surprised (but not totally amazed) if they had fixed it in the hour since your comment was posted but...

I now see separate selectors for maximum flow, minimum flow, and graduations here: https://www.mcmaster.com/flowmeters/

This. I recently wrote something about why I love McMaster.com so much

https://www.bedelstein.com/post/mcmaster-carr

I talk to random people outside of tech who love that site too. I did a bit of googling to get any details on how it came about and came up with this:

https://www.quora.com/Who-designed-UI-UX-and-developed-the-w...

It was heavily influenced by Tufte!

I think they achieved mainstream notoriety due to Mythbusters.

I learned about them through word-of-mouth through various "maker" types of people.

Can confirm as an ex-mcmaster-carr software developer that they put a lot of effort into their websites UI/UX

I appreciate companies like this so much— they sell widgets, so they invest in software and do it right. I worked in the printing industry circa 2009 and the desire to fix antiquated systems was split (and rare). The companies that did are still around; the ones that didn't didn't make it.

The store location selector forgets all the time which you had selected last. What's best is it appears to try to infer location from ip address, so when you are in a home Depot on a mobile, it picks a different store from the one you are standing in.

I think a lot of stores incorporate a "cheater" mechanism where if you're on the store wifi they use that as the location. You could pick it up via IP or hardware MAC (even if you are on a VPN the local router still knows your MAC from when you passed the ToS accept portal).

Doesn't help cell service of course, and cellular data clients are REALLY tricky to geolocate properly. Cell towers are often trunked a considerable distance (apparently?) so your IP can indicate you're quite far from your physical location.

Pages really rely on the browser to cue location in that scenario, but of course many of us turn it off, and at that point you get what you get.

Completely agree, without precise location, they are relying on unreliable signals. You should only have to tell it once explicitly though, they don't seem to keep the cookies around for the store selection.

Our HD can’t get their internet to work, so we have to use our own data to look shit up. Idk how cellular data works but I’m usually some store in Chicago (despite being in Madison), it seems to vary depending on where I am in the store, though I may be making connections that aren’t there.

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