ShopDial
A live app for quickly understanding the dimensions that matter in an unfamiliar product category, then using them to find better-matched products.
Recently shipped! Quickly understand unfamiliar product categories by surfacing the trade-offs, and browsing recommendations based on what you care about.
When you need to buy something in an unfamiliar product category, you're often stuck in rabbit holes of research that last hours, days, or even weeks. You want to make an informed choice, but need to learn the decision dimensions first: what trade-offs exist, what each one means, and which ones matter for your situation.
The idea came from trying to buy a walking treadmill as a gift without knowing the category. The real decision was not 'best treadmill'; it was quiet versus loud, compact versus large, walking versus running speed, smart features versus simplicity, and price. ShopDial turns that process into a tool: a user enters a category, AI models identify the important dimensions, structure them and explain them plainly, then the user adjusts their priorities before another model finds suitable products. The category comes first: the app needs to explain the trade-offs well enough for someone to decide what matters before it recommends anything. The commercial loop is deliberately simple too — help someone understand and narrow the choice, then send them to Amazon when they are ready to buy.
A live prototype that can generate category dimensions, let users shape their criteria, produce recommendations, explain product fit and trade-offs, and send people through to Amazon when they are ready to buy.
The useful bit is not just ranking products. It is helping someone understand what they should care about before they choose.
ShopDial is partly a shopping tool and partly a learning tool. The more interesting promise is reducing the fog at the start of a purchase: helping someone feel more informed before they compare products, rather than overwhelming them with products first.
