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

It could mean anything from "immersiveness" to "the devil incarnate"

Spent 6 months building the product. Now I’m focusing on marketing and branding.

I’ve spent last few weeks studying other successful educational products.

And so far, from my research, pretty much every single one of these apps/sites prioritized making the user “feel good” about learning rather than actually learning.

And unfortunately, this is what the users want. They want to feel good about learning.

All the successful education sites employ these mechanisms that you’re intending to avoid. I wanted to avoid using these as well - but I just don’t see another way. I’ve even had users explicitly ask me to add milestones, streaks, etc to motivate them.

Reality is - most people who really want to study or learn anything, can do so without an app. Even a book from a library will do. But it requires tremendous consistency, effort and time. Apps are way easier and make the user feel good - there’s still learning being done, don’t get me wrong. But user feeling good about it is what keeps them coming back.

Edit: I’ve also studied many of their ads. Often times on places like TikTok, Instagram, etc their ads are what I would call “intelligence porn”. They get you excited about being more intelligent, investing in yourself, intelligence eliticism, etc. These were a common ad strategy that I have discovered so far.

Some apps literally ran ads with text: “become dangerously intelligent” text and had the song from the show Succession play with images of famous researchers and scientists changing quickly. (Newton, Einstein, etc). Stuff like this cracked me up tbh lol. But apparently it works

You can start a conversation with someone, and talk to them about say, the Saracens, and then have them start wondering how they came about their (small) understanding of them. When they realise it was AOE cutscenes, and that the whole project was a backdoor to deliver historical knowledge to people.

I feel like if you eschew gamification, your audience is largely only those with a deep interest of learning.

I used an app to do a security cert a while back, and it would bug me 3 times a day, and challenge me to test my knowledge. I think it really helped keep my focus on the challenge. Likewise, when I was doing my CCNA years ago, the In-30-Days gentleman, would subscribe you to 30 days of motivational emails to read his book and practice the skills. Not an app, but the same sort of thing.

Some people sell the motivation as the core product, some sell the game as the core product (to deliver motivation) and some people sell the knowledge as the core product. All are valid approaches just make sure you are happy with the market you are targeting.

One more thing: I have absolutely no idea how to obtain calm in todays environment. I dont see myself engaging with an app that requires me to be calm ahead of time, but if it somehow strengthened or created a sense of calm that might be a sufficient product differentiator.

It doesn’t sound like the author of that method believes in science?? I’ll pass.