Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–125 of 125 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?

#121

Post by StrataCreator »

That's a tough one! I've considered creating a non-gamified learning app based on spaced repetition and active recall - think Anki flash cards but on steroids :D

The reason why I haven't done it yet is because I never have the time, but if you do then I for one would love an app like that.

There's a lot of talk about today's market, but I think doing something and sticking at it will attract the right attention

Re: Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?

#122

Post by ngokevin »

dgunay wrote: post #114
ngokevin wrote: post #59

As someone who spent 2+ years building one, I would turn away now if you're looking for traction or sustainability ( https://couplingcafe.com ). Though I don't regret it and learned enough to speak to my in-laws. My retention numbers are decent, but I just haven't done the marketing bit yet, and am currently taking a break. Language learning apps are the ultimate sand-pit for solo developers thinking they can offer s…

I tried your app a while ago and I love the concept. I think the real sticking point for me (and maybe many others) wasn't that it wasn't engaging enough, rather that my partner just didn't want badly enough to learn my heritage language. At that point it was better for me to just go back to grinding Anki and consuming content. Automatically losing two users if one drops off is rough.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm trying to sort of post-mortem and I think that's always been a major point I thought I could overcome.

Re: Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?

#123

Post by ngokevin »

climb_stealth wrote: post #95
ngokevin wrote: post #59

As someone who spent 2+ years building one, I would turn away now if you're looking for traction or sustainability ( https://couplingcafe.com ). Though I don't regret it and learned enough to speak to my in-laws. My retention numbers are decent, but I just haven't done the marketing bit yet, and am currently taking a break. Language learning apps are the ultimate sand-pit for solo developers thinking they can offer s…

Just want to say that I appreciate you giving it a good go! I feel a bit of guilt reading it though. I followed your app from when you first announced it on hn. I liked the idea and still think it's great, I am in theory the target demographic of wanting to learn languages as a couple, and yet it didn't stick. For what it's worth none of the other language apps stick either. Maybe it's hard to compete with the heroin…

Thanks for trying and following it. Spent the morning wondering if that's a chance for it and I'm not sure. Just requires Herculean habit building which necessitates dopamine. Anki works because it has 100% of the coverage of people who don't need dopamine.

Re: Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?

#124

Post by thecolorblue »

I have been working on my own language arts app for k-12 (https://snowdayacademy.com). In my experience, if it's not fun or rewarding, nobody is going to use it. Most of my users are parents that want their kid to get better grades, or the students want a better studying experience. So, for me its a combination of interesting content, UX, and better feedback than doing a worksheet.

I have been testing it with my two daughters and they make it very clear when its to painful to be useful.

The other thing that worked for me was talking to experts, in my case reading specialists.

Post reply on HN