Does Anyone Use the Website “Try That Soap”?

I understand the idea. Finding what scents you might like can be difficult if you aren't familiar with the typical fragrance terms, and what they represent. This is a way to gain insight into what scents might appeal to you based on what you like. It recommends fragrance only, which is a useful tool in it's own right.

I've been wet shaving with brush and soap for coming up on a year now, and I still don't always know if I'm going to like a scent, so I think this can be useful.

There is plenty of places to get input on performance, and top performers. So far, it looks like the soaps listed on the page are all well-respected artisan soaps, so the performance *should* be fairly comparable, at least within a few degrees of personal preference.

Will the software allow for users to input soap brands and scents that are not already listed?

trythatsoap (Alex), thanks for signing up and for sharing some of your wet shaving background and the basis to your site! I really like the idea behind the site you have created, and will find some time to use it and get better acquainted with it.

Also, if you feel like it, there is an Introductions section here on DFS (https://damnfineshave.com/forum-introductions) where you can drop by to introduce yourself to other members of the forum.

Thanks again for being here. It’s always nice to be able to interact directly with the people that are “makers” or “creators” in the wet shaving community, and I would consider you one of them.

Nice website. I think it will be really useful.

Hopefully this long winded post helps clarify what Try That Soap is and answers some of your questions. If there any more questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out, and I'd be happy to answer.

You have acknowledged that, in fact, performance can be much different so I won't go there.

Specifically on scent, see The missense of smell: Functional variability in the human odorant receptor repertoirehttp://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/....3598.html and Variability in olfactory receptors affects human odor perceptionhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...133402.htm The TL;DR version is ...

"140 of their 400 olfactory receptors will differ in how they respond to odor molecules."

A mathematician can figure out the exact probabilities but I'll guess its in the millions in variance. To be helpful, a user would need to know that another random user had the exact same 260 olfactory receptors.

So, how's that going to work? This is not insignificant.

The thing I know I'd like to see most from this tool is performance based scoring system.  
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Please do consider adding this important piece and collecting this data as it would improve the tool significantly.

Thanks for the feedback! Are you looking to show an average performance rating on the soap pages, or are you looking to have performance incorporated into the actual recommendation? I'm not disagreeing that performance is important, but by showing crowd sourced information, there are two main issues. 1) It opens itself up to people or groups with an agenda rating a soap poorly for non performance reasons. 2) There are a handful of variables that go into performance/lather that I can't account for algorithmically and/or can skew the ratings, such as users' skill level, water type, brush used, skin type/reactions, etc.

If you're interested in having the performance incorporated into the recommendation, that opens up another problem in how much of the recommendation is performance vs scent. While you value performance over scent, there are also people that are willing to trade off a bit of performance for an amazing scent.

Something that might not have been clear is that, currently, your ratings have no impact on anyone else's recommendations. Everyone is in their own little contained bubble with the only commonality being the soap scent profiles, which tie into the user scent profile. This was done intentionally in order to keep the recommendations personalized and about you. With that line of thinking, I don't have a good solution right now of how I would even incorporate performance into a recommendation when the only input is your personal rating. I suppose I could add static performance data to each soap, similar to the scents, but that's probably even more subjective than scent, and something that performs well for me may not perform well for everyone.

If you have ideas on how to make it work, I'll definitely take them into consideration.

Will the software allow for users to input soap brands and scents that are not already listed?

Right now, it's submitting a request on the contact form (or here). I have a list of 20+ brands to add as I have time, but if there is a brand or soap in particular you would like added, I can prioritize that. Eventually, I'll probably get an official submission together, but those submissions would still need to be curated to make sure people aren't adding bogus information.

trythatsoap (Alex), thanks for signing up and for sharing some of your wet shaving background and the basis to your site! I really like the idea behind the site you have created, and will find some time to use it and get better acquainted with it.

Also, if you feel like it, there is an Introductions section here on DFS (https://damnfineshave.com/forum-introductions) where you can drop by to introduce yourself to other members of the forum.

Thanks again for being here. It’s always nice to be able to interact directly with the people that are “makers” or “creators” in the wet shaving community, and I would consider you one of them.

Thanks for having me and for asking about the site in the first place! You're setting pretty lofty expectations by lumping me in the same category as the great artisans we have feeding our addictions making us great shaving products, but I appreciate the kind words!

Hopefully this long winded post helps clarify what Try That Soap is and answers some of your questions. If there any more questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out, and I'd be happy to answer.

You have acknowledged that, in fact, performance can be much different so I won't go there.

Specifically on scent, see The missense of smell: Functional variability in the human odorant receptor repertoirehttp://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/....3598.html and Variability in olfactory receptors affects human odor perceptionhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...133402.htm The TL;DR version is ...

"140 of their 400 olfactory receptors will differ in how they respond to odor molecules."

A mathematician can figure out the exact probabilities but I'll guess its in the millions in variance. To be helpful, a user would need to know that another random user had the exact same 260 olfactory receptors.

So, how's that going to work? This is not insignificant.

Honestly, I don't think I'm capable of getting the recommendations down to that fine grain level of detail. Best case scenario, I have the exact scent breakdowns provided by soap makers, but the above would still be an issue. It's not going to be perfect, and I hope I didn't come off as claiming it would be.

Hopefully this long winded post helps clarify what Try That Soap is and answers some of your questions. If there any more questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to reach out, and I'd be happy to answer.

You have acknowledged that, in fact, performance can be much different so I won't go there.

Specifically on scent, see The missense of smell: Functional variability in the human odorant receptor repertoirehttp://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v17/....3598.html and Variability in olfactory receptors affects human odor perceptionhttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...133402.htm The TL;DR version is ...

"140 of their 400 olfactory receptors will differ in how they respond to odor molecules."

A mathematician can figure out the exact probabilities but I'll guess its in the millions in variance. To be helpful, a user would need to know that another random user had the exact same 260 olfactory receptors.

So, how's that going to work? This is not insignificant.

The site is providing specific feedback based on what you input as preferences. Nobody else's input impacts your recommendations.

You sign up, you select a bunch of known soaps that you have experience with and you rate the scent. The algorithm spits out future recommendations based solely on your input preferences. The more preferences you put in, the more useful the recommendations you receive.

It doesn't matter how I perceive a scent because my input does not impact the recommendations you receive. The different olfactory values are entirely moot, as only your preferences are used to calculate the recommendations you receive.


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Maybe a separate rating for performance that would allow users to sort soaps based on performance as well as scent. As far as lumping them together for an overall rating I'd figure performance should be at least 75% of a soaps score and scent maybe 25% however I'm sure some would differ from my weighting. By allowing the site to be sorted by the performance rating as well as a scent rating you'd keep the original functionality while adding some additional important information.

If you added a weighted field combining both scores I'm sure you'd have to experiment to find the best solution for giving ratings that were valuable to the majority of the site users.

Another cool option that might take some work off of you would be to allow users (or maybe just soap vendors) to add additional soaps. There are just so many out there as well as new ones appearing all the time that this task could be quite a bit of work on your part to get it complete and then to keep it up to date. I'm sure vendors would want their soaps on the site and would do the grunt work to get pics uploaded and keep everything looking good.

I do like the site and appreciate what you're doing there. Thank you for listening to out suggestions as well.

trythatsoap Whoa, I don't think I knew quite the level of detail you're drilling down to. Totally impressed. Thanks for that explanation.

Ahh, its predicting what I might like based upon how I rank them.

Got it. Good to know.