> McMaster-Carr has a Systems department which handles internal software development, including the website. I actually worked on a lot of the front-end functionality (among other things) during my tenure there and we had 1 person who was essentially the UX lead (I'm sure the team / function has expanded since then).\n>\n> The design philosophy for the website was heavily influence by Edward Tufte and myself and several folks from my engineering team were enrolled in his course to familiarize ourselves with key concepts.\n>\n> When I interviewed with McMaster-Carr I distinctly remember a Director who told me about building the first version of the website himself and not realizing it would become "a real thing" one day. I cannot for the life of me remember his name, but he was a sharp guy and I'm sure he's off doing great things. We walked into work one Monday morning, and his desk was empty and his whiteboard said "poof".
Given the timing and his description of what he did, it seems unlikely any other McMaster-Carr insider would have been writing about it, and this has to be what you are remembering, if anything.
(And https://iacollaborative.com/work/mcmaster-carr/ seems useless here.)"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?"}},"_tags":["comment","author_gwern","story_43925732"],"author":"gwern","children":[43931914,43932488],"comment_text":"I did some searching and I'm not sure the answer you remember exists. All I can find after a bunch of keyword + date-restricted searches in Google, Quora, & HN is Ibrahim Bashir (https://www.quora.com/Who-designed-UI-UX-and-developed-the-w...) who worked there 2003-2005 (https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-work-for-McMaster-Carr...) and who writes:
> McMaster-Carr has a Systems department which handles internal software development, including the website. I actually worked on a lot of the front-end functionality (among other things) during my tenure there and we had 1 person who was essentially the UX lead (I'm sure the team / function has expanded since then).\n>\n> The design philosophy for the website was heavily influence by Edward Tufte and myself and several folks from my engineering team were enrolled in his course to familiarize ourselves with key concepts.\n>\n> When I interviewed with McMaster-Carr I distinctly remember a Director who told me about building the first version of the website himself and not realizing it would become "a real thing" one day. I cannot for the life of me remember his name, but he was a sharp guy and I'm sure he's off doing great things. We walked into work one Monday morning, and his desk was empty and his whiteboard said "poof".
Given the timing and his description of what he did, it seems unlikely any other McMaster-Carr insider would have been writing about it, and this has to be what you are remembering, if anything.
(And https://iacollaborative.com/work/mcmaster-carr/ seems useless here.)","created_at":"2025-05-08T21:03:00Z","created_at_i":1746738180,"objectID":"43931339","parent_id":43926466,"story_id":43925732,"story_title":"Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?","updated_at":"2025-09-26T20:02:12Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"WillAdams"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["iowacollab"],"value":"There is (was?) an absolutely fabulous answer on quora.com which detailed how this site came to be --- from memory:
- initial ecommerce site was a mess (basically a page-by-page recreation of the catalog?) which saw minimal usage
- the redesign, which focused on usability --- notably reduced cognitive load --- resulted in an immediate uptick in orders which grew markedly for a long while until it represented the vast majority of their business EDIT: and also optimized for repeat orders on a schedule
If someone could find that, or a better writeup, I'd be grateful (it's _not_ the Medium.com article) and this page: https://iacollaborative.com/work/mcmaster-carr/ is just a mentioning by the company which did the underpinnings, not the overall architect. This link is decent: https://www.bedelstein.com/post/mcmaster-carr
There was of course previous discussion of this here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34000502
Video on why the site loads so fast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ln-8QM8KhQ
(which is from the Medium.com article)"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?"}},"_tags":["comment","author_WillAdams","story_43925732"],"author":"WillAdams","children":[43926509,43928931,43931339],"comment_text":"There is (was?) an absolutely fabulous answer on quora.com which detailed how this site came to be --- from memory:
- initial ecommerce site was a mess (basically a page-by-page recreation of the catalog?) which saw minimal usage
- the redesign, which focused on usability --- notably reduced cognitive load --- resulted in an immediate uptick in orders which grew markedly for a long while until it represented the vast majority of their business EDIT: and also optimized for repeat orders on a schedule
If someone could find that, or a better writeup, I'd be grateful (it's _not_ the Medium.com article) and this page: https://iacollaborative.com/work/mcmaster-carr/ is just a mentioning by the company which did the underpinnings, not the overall architect. This link is decent: https://www.bedelstein.com/post/mcmaster-carr
There was of course previous discussion of this here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34000502
Video on why the site loads so fast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ln-8QM8KhQ
(which is from the Medium.com article)","created_at":"2025-05-08T14:37:00Z","created_at_i":1746715020,"objectID":"43926466","parent_id":43926273,"story_id":43925732,"story_title":"Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?","updated_at":"2026-02-20T20:15:21Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"datagram"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["iowacollab"],"value":"The FAQ on the Kickstarter page says it has both metric and imperial units.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iacollaborative/reissue..."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Humanscale, the Classic Design Tool, Gets a Second Life"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://www.wired.com/story/humanscale-the-classic-design-tool-gets-a-second-life/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_datagram","story_15096890"],"author":"datagram","comment_text":"The FAQ on the Kickstarter page says it has both metric and imperial units.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iacollaborative/reissue...","created_at":"2017-08-25T22:17:20Z","created_at_i":1503699440,"objectID":"15102684","parent_id":15097172,"story_id":15096890,"story_title":"Humanscale, the Classic Design Tool, Gets a Second Life","story_url":"https://www.wired.com/story/humanscale-the-classic-design-tool-gets-a-second-life/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T01:14:34Z"}],"hitsPerPage":10,"nbHits":3,"nbPages":1,"page":0,"params":"query=IowaCollab&hitsPerPage=10&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":8,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"roundTrip":14},"afterFetch":{"merge":{"mergeLoop":{"prepareNextHit":1,"total":1},"total":1},"total":1},"fetch":{"query":5,"total":6},"total":8},"query":"IowaCollab","serverTimeMS":9}