Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine

http://www.skritter.com

by gsaines • 17 years ago

45 72 17 years ago

gsaines7• 17 years ago

We founded Skritter just about 9 months ago. We got two grants to fund development and as the front page attests, we're just three right out of undergrad living in an apartment and developing full time.

When we were first getting started, App Engine was just becoming available, and we thought that would be a great platform mainly because of its scalable architecture and Python backend, which both Nick and Scott liked. We incorporated the Spaced Repetition after we read about Supermemo in Wired Magazine shortly after launching.

The idea is to charge users small monthly subscriptions with big discounts for semester-signups. Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable. We've also attended 2 trade conferences in language learning software, and will be going to one more in about a month at which we'll be trying to sell Skritter as a site license to institutions.

If you'd like to check it out in more detail, we've set up a demo account for everyone on HN:

UN: hackernews pass: hackernews

Thanks a lot for your time.

patio113• 17 years ago

Since a lot of our current users are young and in school it's really important that we keep the price affordable.

I remember being poor and in college once, where "poor" means I was never in danger of starvation but I did routinely decline invitations to the movies for want of $5.

I also remember a collection of someones (parents, university, scholarship providers, government, self) feeling it was worth $80 per hour of instruction to get me Japanese classes. Please do not use the "Oh noes, our customers are poor!" factoid as a mental excuse to undercharge for your product. ($80. An. Hour.)

I'd also like to note that a significant portion of the American collegiate population has a significant amount of discretionary spending capability. Half of my Japanese class had parents who were paying full freight for that $80 an hour. Do you really need to sell to the other half?

nwinter19• 17 years ago

I think we're in a good place for charging for it: it's something that will save users a lot of time and helps with something they're probably already paying a lot more for (learning Chinese). We also have no competition with writing practice, and not much free online SRS with effort put into it.

So how much does it make sense to charge, from an outside perspective?

briansmith6• 17 years ago

There's so many competitors entering the market, it will be hard for anybody to charge much more than $5. Plus, almost everybody is using the same set of language data, so it is difficult to differentiate. There are already tons of completely free hobbyist- and university- created tools available if you know where to look. Plus, textbook publishers generally provide a suite of (sometimes free) apps to complement their textbooks.

Luckily, I don't think there is any place for ad-financed products (ads are too distracting when you are trying to memorize stuff like this), so there won't be many free commercial systems.

I am building something very similar to this. I have to say I am very impressed with what Skritter has done so far.

cvboss2• 17 years ago

Nihao! Good application, however I would like to see more instruction/tutorial how it works, since it's asking me to draw, but I am not sure what to draw, since I don't know that symbol and I would like to learn it.

ps/ I am interested in learning Chinese, however I am not sure I would pay at that point... Need to see incentives/success stories.

Good luck guys!

gsaines7• 17 years ago

Hey cvboss, thanks for giving it a spin!

Yeah, we really do need an instructional demo video on the "try it page." We actually just got the front page up, so new instructional demo videos and the like are on the way. It's good to know people actually want them, and sorry for any confusion.

Regarding you interest in seeing success stories or incentives, we are going to conduct a study next semester with a big batch of students so that we can make claims about the efficacy, is that the sort of thing you're looking for ("With Skritter, you can learn character 44% faster than with traditional methods, see our study") or would it be more enticing to see small narratives from users about how much its helped them?

nwinter19• 17 years ago

We don't have a lot of stats yet, but I'm at 1700 characters after 60 hours of practice, and I probably could only write 600 when I started.

devin2• 17 years ago

Woo! You rule! If you were here right now I'd shake your hand.

I've been using your app for months. This is a fantastic way to practice character writing.

Simply phenomenal work.

Thank you!

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Thanks, Devin! (Want to get on our front page for saying that?)

natch• 17 years ago

Cool! How can I add more than 1 character at a time? For example say I want to add all the HSK1 characters with one click, is there a way to do that?

[update: I figured out how to use Select: List. Strangely it's taking a long time to add the list. The HSK1 list should already exist on your server somewhere, no? Maybe it's doing it character by character? Is this an App Engine-ism? I would think a simple UPDATE student_character_list INSERT '?' WHERE source_list='HSK1'; would be pretty fast (if I even got that SQL right) but then maybe App Engine doesn't support SQL?]

I just created an account. Is there a difference between the functionality for my fresh account versus the hackernews account, other than different usage data?

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Ah. You've probably just added the entire list at once, where what you want is the "Add starting from..." checkbox. You should delete those (using Select List) or you'll get overwhelmed. We'll work on that UI.

Yeah, App Engine doesn't do SQL. Makes things interesting.

No difference in functionality--everyone is the same right now.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

so easy to try it now: i love it!

bdr2• 17 years ago

Bad: the logo, the blue "next" arrow", the buttons on the front page, overall UI is busy and confusing.

Good: Everything that happens inside that beautiful white square. Stroke recognition, hinting, etc. The demo video is also good.

gsaines7• 17 years ago

Thanks for the comments bdr. I designed the entire page, but as you may have noticed, I've never designed a website before, all my previous design experience has been in posters and print material. Could you elaborate on your suggestions? For instance, we didn't spend a terribly long time coming up with the logo, and if now that you brought it up, I'd rather like a more compact version. Do you think eliminating the text would help?

Regarding the UI clutteri-ness, are you referring to the flash interface or the webpage surrounding it?

bdr2• 17 years ago

Logo: I think you should keep the text. The name is non-obvious so it's helpful to remind the user. The mascot is kind of strange. It looks like a McDonald's character. I'm guessing you wanted something relating to "critter". Something less literal would probably be a better match with the concept of the site. Overall the branding is a little more casual than I would go for, but that part's up to you. (What's up with the weird quotes at the bottom?)

UI, I'm referring to the webpage around the flash. It's a little hard for me to tell because I'm on FF2/Linux now and the site is kind of janky, these are some things I'd change:

- On the homepage, the buttons don't look like buttons.

- On the homepage, the way that the black line follows the borders of the buttons is ugly. Maybe it's the aliasing. If you're going to have that line at all, the horizontal should align with the vertical center of the buttons, instead of some arbitrary point.

- On the learning interface, the horizontal lines extending to the left of the flash are totally arbitrary looking.

- Too many thick black lines. Use contrast to control where the user's attention is drawn. Right now the front page goes logo -> description -> buttons/nav-menu (ignoring the video). Should be description -> buttons -> nav-menu -> logo. Part of this should include making the buttons and nav menu look more clickable.

girk5• 17 years ago

I will second the fact that the UI is very confusing. The functions of the buttons as compared to the graphics did not make sense to me at all.

gyeh• 17 years ago

Very nice job! One potential customer/institution to cater to: western-based Chinese schools:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_schools, http://www.ncacls.org/ncacls_frm_intro.htm

These community based organizations often rely on eastern teaching methods (often rote) to instruct large numbers of young children. Your app would definitely introduce a different mindset (and fun!), when learning Chinese.

Btw, will you guys support different dialects (ie. cantonese)?

gsaines7• 17 years ago

Hey gyeh, thanks for the marketing idea. It's definitely going to be hard to sell to institutions and every bit helps. Plus, I'm taking Chinese 1 right now, and since the page is all in Chinese, I can practice translating what I'm able (and letting Google translate maul the rest).

Right at the moment we don't support any other dialects due mostly to development resource constraints, but Cantonese is on the radar. One thing I didn't mention in my opening comment was that we are going to expand it to Japanese in the near future, which should widen the number of people interested.

w1ntermute• 17 years ago

Yes, please add kanji to the system. I'm learning Japanese and use SRS's for kanji memorization, along with Heisig's Remembering the Kanji (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembering_the_Kanji). While Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/) works wonderfully on my Gentoo system, a web-based option would be nice as well. However, beware of lag; that was one of the big drawbacks of Khatzumemo (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/khatzumemo/), which was otherwise quite well-designed, IIRC.

jbrun• 17 years ago

That is amazing, I spent a year in China and the characters were so hard. I would have to try this over a long time to see if it is better than hand drawings, but it seems pretty good.

How do you deal with radicals and learning related characters?

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Character decompositions while practicing are planned, so when you write each radical or component it'll identify it and give you info on how the character is constructed. That'll take a while, though. We have a radical vocab list, but it's not that great.

We don't have a way of linking related characters together. Haven't thought of any good ideas for it, yet.

devin2• 17 years ago

I would consider linking characters by various criteria (the sound, the radicals, the meaning). In Chinese my experience has been that understanding the relationship between characters is not a science. What I mean is, I don't really care if you are giving me the perfect ancient etymology of a word or character so long as I am able to explore and relate characters in a way that makes sense to me.

rms3• 17 years ago

The relevant Wired article: http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...

pradocchia3• 17 years ago

The stroke recognition is both really cool and somewhat disorienting. Really cool because it works, and somewhat disorienting because if you're off a bit, it repositions the stroke.

In a fluent writer, each stroke follow from muscle memory, relative to the size and position of the previous stroke. Repositioning breaks the rhythm.

I don't know, the positive reinforcement might work very well for a beginner. I would be more worried about the intermediate student and above.

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Really? I'd guess that it's the advanced learners who can abstract characters better and don't need as accurate a writing style.

We're thinking of not repositioning strokes, or maybe not even recognizing them, until each component is completed. Will improve recognition heuristics, give less hints, and be a natural way to indicate components. We have t build the decomposition system first, though. Might that solve the problem you describe?

pradocchia3• 17 years ago

I was using a mouse. It would have been less jarring with a stylus. Also, I was trying to control my hand for standard form/楷书, rather than everyday cursive, so that didn't help either. Had I started learning with a tool like this, my placement would be much better, just because I would have tried very hard to minimize repositioning. Maybe. I'm still trying to think through the implications.

You might try recognizing the strokes, but leaving them in the background in a lighter color?

[big edit here]

Maybe resize and reposition the model character around the input character as it is written, and then provide some sort of visual feedback at the end on the delta? eg, good proportions, but you are 25% too small and 30% off center.

I'm trying to think of some way to a) preserve feedback while b) reinforcing the rhythmic quality of writing. Rhythm is a mnemonic aid. If you can find some way to reinforce it, that would be a huge boon to students.

There's a rhythm to each stroke and a composite rhythm to each character. Combined with regular patterns like radicals and phonetic roots, rhythm is what allows you to memorize thousands of characters. To the point that sometimes you have to write a character to remember its stroke order.

[/edit]

Very cool site, though. I studied all through the 90s, and the pedagogy was just awful. If I knew then what I know now about language acquisition, I could have compressed my studies into 2 or 3 years, rather than 10. You should have an open field.

Also: I'd love to see a system like this for 行书. The heuristics would probably be a lot more complicated, though, and the market much smaller.

Tacomanator2• 17 years ago

I'm glad you're planning on expanding the site to include Japanese, I'm very very excited about this. I was not able to login using the demo account given, did you already expire it?

gsaines7• 17 years ago

Hey Tacomantor, sorry to hear about the problem with the demo account. I'll talk to Scott and Nick and see what can be done about that.

Edit They are currently asleep. I will let them know in the morning however. Thanks for the tip off.

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Someone changed the password, I guess. I changed it back.

rgrieselhuber• 17 years ago

Very nice. If you could incorporate a Japanese version, it would be great.

smoody• 17 years ago

Nicely done! Google should use it as a showcase app -- It's definitely the most 'grown-up' App-Engine-based site I've seen.

As an aside, how did you accomplish those great perspective transformations in your front-page screencast?

gsaines7• 17 years ago

Thanks for taking a look at it smoody. We were actually waiting for some of the new features to come online before we submitted ourselves to the App Engine showcase, but that's definitely happening soon now that everything is put together.

To answer your question about the demo video, I used Adobe After Effects and 3D layer manipulations of video captured in Growler Guncam to create the video effects. We used Guncam, which is a pretty out of date capture program mostly intended for capturing in game footage, because it has the highest capture fps unlike camtasia and its ilk. The problem with Guncam is that it's really resource intensive at 24fps, so we were really restricted in how much of the screen we could capture. And just for total disclosure, I figured a lot of this out myself, but the web developer for fontstruct, who I contacted when building our demo video, was very helpful in guiding me to the right methods and I owe him one. He definitely deserves a shout out.

jwt• 17 years ago

Wow, very impressive stuff. A job well executed and done. Keep it up!

swombat• 17 years ago

Looks absolutely awesome. I gave up on chinese a month ago (my chinese girlfriend just broke up with me and I've decided to learn spanish instead), but the tool looks immensely useful, and I was looking for a tool like this previously (and didn't find all that much). Learning to write the characters is integral to learning to read them (stroke order is very important).

The video is excellent... I just sat there and stared at it. Only criticism is, being able to draw the characters on-screen does not automatically translate to being able to write them by hand. Do you have a way to translate the on-screen writing skill to manual writing skill? If not, I would suggest this simple method: provide a way for the user to select characters that he/she has already learned on-screen and print out a practice sheet (A4 or Letter sized, probably as a PDF), filled with measured squares (with the guidelines), with the first square containing the character, the next 10 containing a pale grey version of the character, and all the other squares blank.

In my experience I needed to fill most of an A4 page before being able to write the character freehand without guidelines - perhaps even more than that. If you have this feature, then next time I'm learning chinese (!) I'll gladly pay an "affordable monthly subscription" (like, about $5-10) to use your tool, probably for about a year (I'd probably buy a year in advance).

Oh, as someone pointed out, you'll lose all the students with that subscription... perhaps worth offering a student subscription for a little less (or even contacting universities to subsidise their student memberships?).

Good luck!

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Thanks, swombat. I guess printable drill sheets will go on the feature list, but they sound pretty low priority.

You're right that writing in the screen only isn't going to do anyone's handwriting any prettiness, but so far it looks like knowing how to write each character transfers from one to the other. Perhaps calligraphic style can be learned by interested students on their own?

girk5• 17 years ago

Just so you know, the feature of having printable drill sheets should most definitely NOT be low priority. It might very well be your magic key to getting institutions on board. My Chinese professors from the past have been pining over such a feature, and continually ask me for resources that would meet this need. Again, drop me an email at melgirk at mail by Google.

Just as a bit of background, I am fluent in Chinese, have a degree in Chinese, and a few years ago, published a set of Chinese flashcards that are being sold in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, Japan, the US, and soon, Europe. I have a lot of relevant experience and knowledge to contribute.

dantheman• 17 years ago

I just signed up, but once i get to my home page I click practice & it doesn't allow me to start.

I'd like to learn a simple character as soon as I've signed up.

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Ah. I think we'll improve the post-signup flow to land you on the vocab lists page.

simc2• 17 years ago

I'm a serious student of Chinese. Would I pay for this? Maybe if it was cheap, but probably not. The stroke order thing is useful, and that is the only reason i'd use it. It just revealed to me the while I was writing the strokes for 我 in the right order I was writing the first stroke the wrong way, which was interesting I guess. However, your stroke order for 好 seems wrong (the woman radical upward vertical stroke, should come before the horizontal, according to Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1).

However now I'm not a absolute beginner any more so I have a reasonably good intuition about stroke order, but if I write them in the wrong order I guess I don't really care very much.There are already many good spaced repetition programs like Anki, which are free. I've implemented my own system based of Leitner flashcards for the Nintendo DS (I haven't released it), which is what I use.

nwinter19• 17 years ago

We allow any stroke order for 女 because a lot of people write it non-standardly in order to make it look better.

Skritter's deal is to make spaced repetition easy (premade textbook lists, no need to grade yourself) and efficient (taking advantage of domain-specific knowledge), while building writing practice into it. Certainly if you're making your own SRS, you probably don't need the ease of use. Your Nintendo DS app sounds cool--are you planning on releasing it, or is it a personal project?

simc2• 17 years ago

I am planning to put it up, but it is basically does what I want it to now so I am not going to put a lot effort into it to go the extra mile for consumer grade usability. You have to create a pcx file for every question/answer card, which makes it a bit difficult to use if you can't program a script to render them from a csv file. I was thinking of putting the program up with a couple of premade decks like remembering the kanji and perhaps some other textbooks.

est• 17 years ago

I am a Chinese, I'll say this app is awesome, esp with the animated Flash for stroke orders. You must have quite a large database & clever algorithm to do so.

The only website I know that could lookup Chinese characters based on strokes drawing on screen is http://www.nciku.com/

About GAE & GFW, I strongly suggest skritter to support httpS protocol fully

pradocchia3• 17 years ago

the handwriting recognition at nciku.com is pretty cool. it had no problem with cursive forms or joined strokes. thanks for the link!

si2• 17 years ago

What a cool application. I would love to be able to use it without paying when you do launch. I find that learning Chinese on there becomes enticing, and there is a certain feeling that I am playing a game. I don't think it would hurt to have a ten character demo on the front page with a full tutorial for the Chinese and computer illiterate. That may hook inidividual users, especially if you can buy in at a good rate for starter packages. It seems like you guys are trying to exclusively appeal to the very intent on learning Chinese people, but even from your testimonials it seems that Skritter is a good pass time, even for those not studying Chinese and just want an easy, fun way of drawing chinese letters. I think offering a startup package for cheap will draw a lot of people, and as I have found out, you will soon get hooked.

Also, it may be sweet to add little quiz games to Skritter. Like timed strokes, or something fun (you appear to be creative) to really entice people and motivate them to move on to the next lesson. It always feels better to conquer something like that in an online learning app... And finally, please tell you guys are planning an iPhone app?

nwinter19• 17 years ago

Those are good ideas. I guess we have been targeting focused learners. I'm not sure how much we could offer for free, though, without diluting it for paying users. What do you think?

An iPhone app will be awesome, but we're pretty bottlenecked on developing power, so it'll have to be a while. Too bad!

Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Spaced Repetition on App Engine

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