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by ISeemToBeAVerb 4524 days ago
I would absolutely love to see a well designed SRS Flashcard app!

I've used both Mnemosyne and Anki and I have to admit, while I love their rich feature sets, I reallllly hate their interface design and usability. Not only is it unintuitive and overly complex, but they both run really slow on my laptop.

I still can't believe there aren't better solutions available. Anki is probably my most used piece of software and it sucks to have to use a crappy interface.
3 comments
beering 4524 days ago
So, what exactly is wrong with Anki's interface? The basics seem pretty simple - load a deck, and if you know the answer, click the green button, and if you don't, the red button. I can't imagine why you'd need to delve into the complex features daily.

I think for 99% of usage, there are only a few buttons in Anki. But this may be a case where any sufficiently "simple" interface is insufficiently rich, and any sufficiently rich program will have some interface complexity somewhere.

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barry-cotter 4524 days ago
The interface for making/entering cards is not so hot. If I were even minimally competent at scripting or not bone lazy I would learn to use a proper text editor and get it to spit out cards from a text file.

All that said, I agree. Anki is one of the most useful pieces I software I have ever encountered.

To anyone who is on the edge about using SRS I recommend downloading it onto computer and phone and getting a good shared deck to build the habit. Building your own decks is superior but really, just start.

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ricg 4524 days ago
Me too, so I gave it a shot myself inspired by the many Med students in my area. I started with a Mac app (Flashcard Hero), currently working on an iPhone counterpart with iCloud sync. Tried to keep the interface as simple as possible. Cards can only be rated easy/unsure/hard, the UI hides the actual algorithm and marks cards from red (very hard) to green (memorized).

UI: http://flashcardhero.com/screenshots/ I'm always open for suggestions.

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dfan 4524 days ago
I've been using Mnemosyne for over 4 years (9000 cards) and have been quite happy with it. The only slowness I've noticed is when generating graphs of extended time periods (over a month).
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