[mvind]

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback! This was a proof of concept of the idea of creating cards through a chrome extension. There is still a lot of crucial features missing, and I know that now. But from my experience Anki is not an easy tool to use for non-technical users, so the aim for memordo is to have the easability of quizlet but the functionality of anki.

[DecayingOrganic]

I take advantage of that complexity though. For example, I practice intentional vocabulary acquisition by adding cards in my own custom note type called 'Vocab.'

I installed AnkiConnect add-on which allows me to communicate with Anki over a simple HTTP API and complimented it with a CLI tool which automatically fetches the audio or whatever is needed to fill in the fields for the card and adds it to Anki.

So all you have to do is open the terminal and write "add [word]". And the magic happens:

1. A card which the agent is prompted to pronounce the word, followed by the correct pronunciation.

2. A card which the agent is prompted to write down the word after hearing the pronunciation.

3. A card which requests a random example sentence featuring the word, served by a local server. (https://i.imgur.com/11E3IqE.png)

The last card is the most helpful, it provides comprehensible input in the form of unique sentences that uses that word, so you get acquainted with the word's collocations, the context in which it is used and etc.

[BossingAround]

> I take advantage of that complexity though.

So do I. I suspect we're not the target users of the app then.

The target user is probably someone who'd write math equations as "a^2 + b^2 = ?" instead of learning how to use LaTeX in Anki.

[azeirah]

HN as a technical audience is probably not your target audience, but I do think users of flashcards tend to be students.

I don't know many students who (1) want to use flashcards and (2) have the money to pay 5$ a month for something that isn't food/netflix/spotify/beer/rent.

I'd love to see how this works out for you, maybe I'm wrong about the target audience being the less-technically inclined but motivated students. Alternatively, if the app is good, but the pricing model is wrong, might just change it to charging something like 2,99$ per user, or per year or something like that.

[imdsm]

If I can just add a slightly less critical point to the above — yes, the $5 price turned me off, but I think it's a great concept. As I read this, I had physical revision cards in front of me, filling them up with formula prior to joining a lecture, so I could use them for reference.

Would I use this for book marking formulae and research? Potentially. But would I pay for it? Sadly not.

It's a great idea, but there have to be two things to make this successful I think: a useful concept, and a tool valuable enough to be worth money.

Good luck, and don't give up!

[iandanforth]

HN might not be your target audience. There are a lot of "power users" here.

As an aside I wrote up why Anki doesn't work for me, perhaps you'll find something there that inspires you.

https://medium.com/@iandanforth/why-anki-doesnt-work-for-me-...

[allenu]

I think the flash card space is interesting because I think Anki users are very much "power users". Because it takes a curve to learn how to use it (poor UI) and there are lots of extensions, the type of person who ends up using it is a more advanced user.

The rate limiting is a big issue and I think something can be overcome. I'm working on my own app and what I've done is made it so you can limit the number of cards you review per day. Your daily lessons will usually be some combination of overdue cards and new cards. However, if you have too many overdue cards, there's no point in adding new cards to your lesson.

I know with SRS reviewing a card "just before you are going to forget it" is a big part of why people believe it's effective. However, I think that's just an imperfect model, so I think if you push an overdue card by a day or two, it'll still be effective. (i.e. there's no reason to force someone to review cards on a given day, obviously there's a window here where if you review too far in the future, you're going to find it harder) With this in mind, I made it so if you rate limited your daily lesson, the app just pushes the overflow to the next day. I think there are also other variables that make the models imperfect (some facts are easier to remember than others, how you present the content might make it easier/harder to remember, and so on).

Regarding easy input, I'm not familiar with how easy or hard it is to input images and audio, but I made sure that my app allowed a super easy drag and drop. In general, the app should make it incredibly easy to create new cards, edit existing, and add various media. Cards are the lifeblood of the tool, so working with them should be super fluid.

As for other modalities, I think that's an interesting topic to dive into. With self-learning applications, you have to balance making the most general use cases easy. Once you started adding more complex card types, your UI is going to have add affordances to make those possible, which has the effect of making it more challenging for the novice (who just uses text, images, and audio) to use.

Anyway, to sum up, it's definitely an interesting space because you have power users who may want to pull your app one way and regular users who may pull the app another way. I think finding the right balance of features is a challenge.