
Show HN: Ulangi App – Make learning vocabulary easier - jimmyloi92
https://ulangi.com
======
jimmyloi92
If you are interested in the Android version and want to get notified when it
comes out.You can subscribe to us at ProductHunt.

[https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/ulangi](https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/ulangi)

It should be launched in 2 weeks.

------
inawarminister
>name is Ulangi

>No Malay or Indonesian in the examples

Oof

To be serious, I am excited to recommend this to my iPhone using friends
though just for the clean design and focus on vocabulary. I myself am using
anki(droid) and it's amazing, but a bit ... Too flexible for easy usage

~~~
jimmyloi92
Thank you very much. Indonesian and other few languages were initially listed
in the app but I decided to remove them to avoid confusing users as I couldn't
build all features for them . But I will definitely add more languages as time
goes.

------
samuraiseoul
It looks nice but there's no android version(I know its coming but I can't try
it til then) and more importantly, is I have anki decks already that I would
want to migrate but it doesn't look like that's possible. I like the SRS that
anki has, but I like the synched, public decks that I've been using and don't
want to put more effort into this. I would be VERY inclined to try it once it
comes to android if I could easily migrate my anki decks.

~~~
jimmyloi92
Thank you very much. Migrating from Anki is not possible now. Ulangi is free
so there is no lost to try it out to see the differences.

~~~
samuraiseoul
I definitely want to and will try it, but its just gonna be a pain to remake
decks is all and I assume it's all about the same.

~~~
jimmyloi92
In Ulangi, you can click "add" to add specific vocabulary you want to learn.
You can also click "add all" to add all of them from a deck (or set). This way
you only choose to learn what is essential to you. I mean it's really painless
to manage your own decks (or sets). Moving things around are also easy in
Ulangi. Although I only watched the AnkiDroid app from youtube, I'm sure there
are many significant differences between Anki and Ulangi.

------
huhtenberg
Nice. Very nice, in fact. Here is some feedback:

The first-use UX can use a bit of tuning - that is, the app should explain how
to build up the dictionaries and just offer to pick some pre-existing sets
from your collection, because that's what 99% of people would want to do. The
UI should definitely not default to an empty Manage tab.

Second gripe and it's actually a deal-breaker - the app needs an Internet
connection to get started. I fully expect this sort of app to come preloaded
with basic word sets for all supported languages, with an option to pick up
more IF there's an online connection. It is also perfectly fine to charge
money for both basic sets and extensions. The main point is that the app
should be self-contained and remain fully usable in its existing state
regardless of whether there's an Internet connection and whether your servers
are still up and running.

Third - I hate giving away my email address and I find it obnoxious when the
first page of a _native_ app is a "give us your email address" form. In fact,
I see no reason for a native app to _require_ an email address to be usable.
If it wants to do server-based profile persistence, it should rely on a device
ID. Then, if a user wants to share his profile between multiple devices, it
would make sense to start asking for an email address.

Fourth - going back to the UI, the Manage tab should really be displaying not
the list of words, but the list of _sets_, because that what I was selecting.
This view needs grouping. Without it will become overpopulated and very hard
to, well, manage. Consider the case when I added 30 words from some set,
learned them and then decided to remove them - that's going to require a lo-o-
o-ot of tapping.

There is something called "dictionaries" on the Manage tab, but it's not
really clear how these correspond to "sets" from the Discovery tab... Having
played with the app for an hour it seems to me that there are words, sets and
dictionaries, but that's one level too many. There should really be just words
and sets... unless dictionaries are for different languages.

Another thing is that, say, I'm trying to learn German words. It's not clear
to me if it's possible to train English-to-German translation with your app.
That is, train for the case when I need to say something (i.e. to translate
_to_ the target language) rather than when I need to translate _from_ it.

Fifth - when taking a writing form of quiz, an UI can use some better support
for going into the middle of a word and correcting a mis-typed letter. Stock
support for that via tap-hold-zoom is slow and cumbersome in this context. As
an option - clicking on Hint should place the cursor immediately after the
first incorrect letter, so you'd only need to do Backspace and then type a new
letter. This will make quizes to go much faster.

Separately, I must compliment the UI design, which I think is excellent.
Minimalist, but without going to the extreme. Really well done.

~~~
jimmyloi92
Hi huhtenberg, Thank you so much for your feedback. I agree that I should not
ask user to sign up. The only reason for signing up is that the app knows who
to do synchronization/backup to the backend server automatically. In the
future versions, I can make synchronization off by default so creating an
account is optional.

The app connects to the backend server to fetch existing sets. It just that
there are not a lot of them right now. Will definitely add more sets.

Again thank you for feedback. I will take your suggestions in mind. I'm
currently testing the Android version. There are too many things to do.

------
krat0sprakhar
Just gave it quick whirl - found the design to be really well done and
intuitive! Congrats!

Given that Android is still in the works, am I right to assume that these apps
were built independently rather than using a cross platform toolkit (e.g
flutter/RN). Is that so?

~~~
jimmyloi92
Thank you very much. It is built with React Native. I'm building tests for
Android. It should be released in 1 or 2 weeks after all bugs are fixed and it
passes all the tests.

------
PacifyFish
Awesome landing page! What did you use to make it?

Also, are you planning on charging in the future? If not, I'm worried support
will disappear which makes me scared of investing time into the app ) :

~~~
jimmyloi92
Thank you very much. The landing page is bought from themeforest (the name is
Enovo landing page) then I slightly modified it. I don't want to spend too
much time on the landing page as the main focus is the app. I'm not planning
to charge in the future. I will try to get sponsors and donations from Patron.
I guarantee to you that it will not disappear because I put a lot of effort on
the architecture to make it less costly to maintain.

------
cyborgx7
This looks great. Excited to check it out when it comes to android. You hooked
me in with your examples all being japanese. Also, I want to know how that
Atom minigame works.

~~~
jimmyloi92
Thank you. I'm excited about the Android version too as a creator.

