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There is a whole movement around enshittification, and I see potential in this kind of app, even though it still seems to be a niche.
Your biggest issue is going to be that language learning for adults is largely an unsolved problem. I know people with 1000+ day streaks on Duolingo who are nonetheless not fluent, and from everything I’ve read, it seems clear that spaced-repetition techniques are not sufficient (and possibly not necessary) to achieve fluency. Most people say you need immersion, which is difficult for an app to provide (research other people who have tried, you probably wouldn’t be the first and can save a lot of time, effort and heartbreak by learning from other people’s failures).
I'm working on a project in a very similar space, and we decided to add gamification. We don't want to harass our users or annoy them into using the app, and therefore our notifications will be easily manageable. But we believe that gamification is very helpful for encouraging users to learn consistently, and so we will include it. But at the same time, we are putting a lot of intention into it not being a distractio…
Yep. "App XXX would like to send you notifications" -> "Do not allow" :)
Could we say that Anki is a non-gamified app for learning?
Anki is complicated to the point of being intimidating. Even just the card/note split is quite confusing—I built another app to drill me on decks backwards and forwards because I found this so confusing.
If you want to build the app you want to use, go for it.
I don't want to project, but outside of video gaming, I'm seeing people in my personal networks pull back from digital more and more - not because these tools and apps aren't useful, but because they are so hostile.
So you might be ahead of your time. That said, businesses cost money to run so you need to assess your churn if you aren't going to have a subscription model.
Poor gamification is a bigger risk than non-gamification done well IMHO. That's where a lot of children's learning apps have failed in the past.
I'd love an app like this. I usually go through my Anki deck in bed before sleep and in the morning and am always on the lookout for other language learning methods. Being in bed, I don't want anything too gamified or exciting during that time. Just some calm/chill practice before I sleep.
Things I do more and more often as time goes in Spanish
- Subtitles in Spanish always on whenever possible
- Audio (music (just bought some Bad Bunny), television, sports broadcasts)
- Order in Spanish
- Interfaces in Spanish (computers, televisions, phones)
- Text friends
- Consume news
- Read wikipedia when I need information
- Take notes for work and life
- Play videogames
It really starts compounding, my goal is to stop using the Anki decks entirely in 2026. At that point I should be able to start learning whatever my next goal is in Spanish so that I can continue using my Spanish while working on... cooking or whatever it is I want to focus in on next