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Digi-Key has changed and it is not very good

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ataradov:
It is still not a good argument to dumb down the interfaces instead of educating people.

Standard UI elements are not that hard to figure out. If you don't know how multiple selections work, you are likely not very efficient with managing files in the OS. As a junior anything you should be looking for education rather than expecting that things will be fixed for you.

It is unbelievable how many people I see that have no clue how to do even the most basic things with the command line. And asking to add something to PATH is like asking to write a PhD. This stupidity must end at some point.

gussy:

--- Quote from: ataradov on January 18, 2021, 06:55:06 am ---It is still not a good argument to dumb down the interfaces instead of educating people.

Standard UI elements are not that hard to figure out. If you don't know how multiple selections work, you are likely not very efficient with managing files in the OS. As a junior anything you should be looking for education rather than expecting that things will be fixed for you.

It is unbelievable how many people I see that have no clue how to do even the most basic things with the command line. And asking to add something to PATH is like asking to write a PhD. This stupidity must end at some point.

--- End quote ---

That's a great point and I completely agree. I'd much rather see some useful tooltips or pop-overs educating users how to use a standard html select list and breaking a standard HTML element.

OTOH, for a while now Windows has let you select multiple files by clicking a select box on each one, presumably because selecting multiple items wasn't intuitive enough. I'm sure there was some solid user testing behind that change. Only DigiKey knows the actual win/loss ratio of how these changes attract or detract customers. There's a good chance we are in the minority :-//

james_s:

--- Quote from: gussy on January 18, 2021, 07:04:12 am ---OTOH, for a while now Windows has let you select multiple files by clicking a select box on each one, presumably because selecting multiple items wasn't intuitive enough. I'm sure there was some solid user testing behind that change. Only DigiKey knows the actual win/loss ratio of how these changes attract or detract customers. There's a good chance we are in the minority :-//

--- End quote ---

I don't think they do know. I think somebody in management has been watching Amazon rake in billions and wants to be like them. The problem they don't seem to realize is that DK has an entirely different customer base with entirely different needs and trying to be Amazon will fail, while abandoning the needs of their existing customer base will also fail. By the time anyone realizes that the person who made that decision will have taken their bonus and moved on to some other company.

james_s:

--- Quote from: gussy on January 18, 2021, 06:51:13 am ---I literally just explained one real world case where the new picklists would have been easier to use for a junior EE I've observed with my own eyes. :palm:

--- End quote ---

If somebody can't figure out how to select multiple items I would be seriously questioning the hiring decision. That is something that virtually every 8 year old should know how to do by now, more so anyone who has managed to earn a degree in EE. If they can't figure out how to do that, how are they ever going to navigate their way through any EDA or IDE in order to produce any output?

SVFeingold:
I'm glad to see these viewpoints laid out so passionately. It really helps me identify the kind of engineer I don't want to become as I roll through my 30s and beyond.

Everyone is stupid if they don't use my workflow. New customers are confused by the UI? Good. They're dumb anyway. How'd they get to be engineers?  Anyone going through a 4 year program should know how to use this website! Good riddance! Digikey doesn't need such dumb customers.

Seriously what kind of attitude is this? Digikey doesn't exist to rant at the clouds about youngsters these days. They're here to attract new customers and keep existing ones and grow their business. As is every business. Only they know whether their changes accomplish this goal or not, because they're the only ones with relevant data. I hope they fire any web designer that can't set up simple A/B tests without going off on a tangential rant about how everyone is stupid nowadays.

Now that said: yes, I agree that some of their design changes aren't great for my workflow. The picklist threw me off for a bit at first until I got used to it. Which took about 15 minutes. Do I like it more? Not sure yet, but there have been many times in the past when I accidentally let go of CTRL and wiped the selection I spent a while making. So I get the motivation. It's ironic to rant about dummies who don't understand a simple UI considering how it's arguably even simpler now. Glass houses, etc.

This is the same attitude Linux fanboys have. I wonder how "everyone who can't use a command line is stupid" Linux is doing vs MacOS in the consumer market? I wonder why that could be.

Doesn't mean everything DK does is perfect but they're not going to listen to people ranting about young engineers in lieu of constructive criticism. I'm as opinionated as anyone else but I try to consider things from other viewpoints in case I'm wrong. And frankly the more I progress in my career, the more and more I encounter mid-to-late career engineers who are needlessly bitter/angry about literally every little thing. It takes actual work to not go that route and folding your arms saying "everyone's dumb but me" isn't the way. Anecdotally this attitude has been much more prevalent in the EE field than any other field I work with. Who knows.

On-topic: When I was a new engineer I had no problems with the picklists (yay) but I admit that Digikey wasn't really useful to me. I wasn't working with an existing BOM, rather was looking for random parts to do cool projects. In other words: trying to discover new products. And it wasn't really great for that. It still isn't IMO. Nowadays I know exactly what I'm looking for so Digikey is much more usable for me, but I understand the struggle for new and/or inexperienced engineers. It took a while for Digikey to "make sense." Until that point I frequented Sparkfun and Adafruit much more often because they cater to new engineers and really just to exploring and discovering cool stuff. They're not really comparable. I definitely don't want Digikey to change that much but there's probably something they could borrow that would make it more enticing for new engineers. Throwing a bone to a new engineer today might mean tens of thousands of dollars in POs in the future.

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