Show HN: readfa.st - learn to read faster

http://readfa.st

by sashakatsnelson • 15 years ago

46 27 15 years ago

readfa.st

avree• 15 years ago

Your site tells me absolutely nothing about the product without requiring me to sign up.

Consequently, I did not sign up.

bherms• 15 years ago

Agreed... You need a video, a tour, or a how it works section. I'm not signing myself up for anything without a clue of what it does or how it works.

wahnfrieden• 15 years ago

No, you need a lazy signup process -- let me use (most) everything immediately. Save my data in a cookie or in a temporary user object on your server, and make it permanent once I signup.

athst• 15 years ago

I agree also, you really need a lot more information up front to tell people what the service actually does. Especially for a service like this, I don't see a lot of value hiding the content behind a registration wall.

thaumaturgy• 15 years ago

On the bottom of the page, below the signup form: FAQ. It answers questions like, "What is readfa.st?", "How much does readfa.st cost?", and, "How does readfa.st work?"

sashakatsnelson4• 15 years ago

Good feedback on the sign-up sheet. We've cobbled together a brief video explanation of the site - let me know what you think!

ladon86• 15 years ago

Nice execution! I like the badges and WPM counter on the right, and it steps you nicely into using it.

creativeone2• 15 years ago

Awesome app! I'd actually enjoy reading regular books like this. Can I upload PDFs to have read to me at my speed of choice? If you could access my kindle library that be even better.

johnwatson112183• 15 years ago

I have also wanted to do this, or have a link to pull in titles from project gutenberg.

lpnotes• 15 years ago

Nice idea! A couple of suggestions: 1) Make the quizzes shorter than 2 minutes. 2) As avree and bherms suggested, you need an intro. before the sign-up. I'm just an impulsive sign-upper because I like checking out new sites, but I suggested the site to my friend and he just stared at it before getting distracted by something else.

sashakatsnelson4• 15 years ago

That's a good point on the quizzes - we've added logic to choose quizzes that are more reasonable in length (going for 90 seconds for now and we'll see how it affects use).

ftwinnovations• 15 years ago

This site is fundamentally flawed. The key to fast reading is learning to read phrases rather than words. It is the same concept as reading words instead of letters (obviously after you have passed the phonetics reading stage).

The only site I know of to truly learn to read fast, without silly scams or even a cost, is http://www.readspeeder.com/ It takes a little figuring out as it is really lacking in usability (I suggest reading the help files) but it will give you staggering results.

josh33• 15 years ago

I wouldn't change a thing. This is awesome. I will be using this to consistently improve my language. With the amount of content I read online, improving a skill at the same time is an added bonus that I think is awesome. Curious how you will monetize.

SkyMarshal2• 15 years ago

Hey guys, great idea, but your method seems off from most of the speed reading courses I've found.

Whereas those courses focus on training you to not just read individual words, but entire lines or blocks of text, and without subvocalization, yours seems to focus on increasing your word-by-word reading speed as much as possible.

In your FAQ you say:

"We have taken the latest speed-reading curricula and cut out all of the extraneous exercises to create an effective, simple tool to improve reading speed. The readfa.st curriculum forces users to read at speeds that push the upper limits of your comprehension and by constantly challenging you to push yourself faster; at the same time we use regular quizzes to ensure that you maintain your understanding of the text."

What is the 'latest speed-reading curricula' you've based the site exercises on? I have an interest but not expertise in this subject, would love to know more details.

Also...

"Ani, one of our co-founders, read at over 1,000 words per minute without any training. When we noticed how blazingly fast he was finishing books, we began to look into what makes people read at such vastly different speeds. We did extensive research into the scientific (and pseudo-scientific) literature around how people read, but the body of work is not very encouraging. Most speed-reading products make unverified and unverifiable claims about their effectiveness, and because of their SEO and sales interests, those specious claims overwhelm most legitimate discussion around speed-reading. One of our goals is for readfa.st to help us better understand the process of reading and what factors affect speed and comprehension."

It would be both awesome in general and good marketing in particular if you elaborated on your findings. Think OK-Cupid data blog but about speed reading.

Finally, one question. On the initial assessment I hit 'Too Fast' at 1105 WPM, but the report said I was only reading at 880 WPM. Why the discrepancy?

http://i.imgur.com/zf9AC.png

sashakatsnelson4• 15 years ago

The exercises we looked at were everything from the index-card/finger and stop-watch to flashing words all-around the screen. Based on the small bits of data available and the effectiveness of the various exercises on our own reading speeds, we found that flashing "chunks" of text (similar to spreeder.com) and the "word-snake" method (that we decided on) were the only effective methods of increasing reading speed. Because the word-snake most closely approximated off-line reading, we settled on that as the basis of our curriculum. For sources, we looked at available literature like Evelyn Wood and software like 7SpeedReading.

As far as a data blog - that is one of our middle-term goals, but until we have more users, the best we can offer are anecdotal evidence. This type of shoddy analysis is a big part of the problem with existing reading research, so the plan is to wait until we have a more robust data-set before we start publishing results. I'll post on HN when we start publishing results.

The reason for the difference between the final treadmill reading speed and the suggested speed is that users regularly demonstrated a significant loss of comprehension at the final speed. We think that it was because of the delay between realizing that the treadmill was too fast and stopping the treadmill. At first, we reduced the speed by 10%, but after a few more users, it was clear that was insufficient, so we're trying it at 20%. The quiz speed is adjustable (with the faster/slower buttons or by using f and s as hot-keys), so it's meant more as a suggested starting point than as a definitive reading speed.

Thanks for your feedback!

SkyMarshal2• 15 years ago

Ah cool. It's a very interesting area, and extremely useful this day and age. Good luck with it!

johnwatson112183• 15 years ago

Every time the topic of speed reading comes up I post about

http://www.zapreader.com/

This javascript site parses a whole lot of text and displays it at a fixed location very quickly. I can read about 475 words/minute with very good comprehension. I don't catch all the specific names but in some cases I find that I form a high level overview of the material much faster. I tend to notice big picture patterns when I use this tool. I don't know why more people aren't writing apps that work like this for ios or android. When I finish my current side project I want to try something like this in flex.

sashakatsnelson4• 15 years ago

Another site, similar to ZapReader is spreeder.com. Sites like these offer a really spartan reading experience, but on top of a proven curriculum/methodology. They were a big part of what inspired us to create the first version of readfa.st.

johnwatson112183• 15 years ago

Yea I see what you mean about spreeder.com. I think what makes it so fast is that I don't have to move my eye across the page in what I think are called 'saccades'.

I imagine an interface where I fix my gaze in the center and see text pulled through the single point. Perhaps the words near the fix point are a little blurry. Words further away are unreadable. I think there should be something like a gutter on the right or left for images, equations or code samples that floats from bottom to top as it is in context.

If I hit pause I would like to see all the text snap into focus with my focus word highlighted somehow.

Also, I would like this to just work with any old web page. I hate having to pull the print version of long articles then copy and paste into zap reader.

Good luck with your site.

rorrr• 15 years ago

That's not innovative at all.

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

I would pay between 5-10 usd/month to see my speed increase. I think I am going to be using this tool a lot if it works.

huhtenberg• 15 years ago

Good stuff. It is the first Show HN site that I actually bookmarked for later. It is well-done and it is interesting.

A couple of things though. Requiring an email address upfront means that I will feed you a @mailinator.com one. Let people play with the site a bit, and then require creating an account if they want to save the progress... or something along these lines.

Second, a confirmation email appears to include a numerical user ID. This inadvertently discloses the number of users you have to anyone who signs up. May want to fix that.

jasonkester• 15 years ago

15 years into the web and still we see new sites coming out with the "Go Away" pattern. I just don't understand it.

If a potential user has somehow managed to find his way onto your homepage, that's a big win for you. You need to take that opportunity to hook him as quickly and effectively as possible. Given the average attention span on the internet, you've got at most 5 seconds to avert the Back Button, then maybe 10 more to convince that user that your thing is worth investing some time in.

Know the absolute worst thing you can do at that point? Stick that user on a page with absolutely no information about your product, then assign him some chores to do so before you'll let him even find out. Like this:

http://readfa.st/signin

makepanic• 15 years ago

mh would be awesome if you make an background-Fallback for the buttons or add prefixes for more browsers.

i.e. in Opera i don't see any linear-gradient if you only use -moz- / -webkit- just add a background:#color one line above the linear-gradient. Older browsers display the #color and newer browsers use the background:linear-gradient

creativeone2• 15 years ago

Works on my iPhone, way to go, the screen size is a little nit of a problem but the site runs smoothly.

tagnu_• 15 years ago

Nice app. Any way to integrate the bookmarklet on online pdfs files ? or import the contents of .pdf to readfa.st?

Show HN: readfa.st - learn to read faster

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