

Request for some critique on our startup - ess

Hi all, we'd like some criticism on our startup. It's Ingolingo, and the url is http://www.ingolingo.com. Be harsh, I don't mind!
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cstejerean
Don't require users to sign up. Let the users start the process and then
decide whether or not to sign up. I don't like having to type in all that
information just to try out a service.

~~~
ess
You're right. I'll do this as soon as I figure out how to!

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lisper
Great idea, lousy execution. Besides the problems others have already
mentioned, it's slooooooooowwwwwwww. Also, two very serious fundamental
problems:

1\. Many of your translations are wrong. I took the Spanish lesson. All of the
Spanish verbs are infinitives, but the English translations are all gerunds.

2\. Learning a language one word at a time doesn't really teach you the
language. You need to learn more than just vocabulary, you need grammar,
conjugations, declinations, etc.

But I hasten to add, the idea of a language tutor that keeps track of what you
know and only drills you on the stuff you don't is a really good one and very
promising if you can actually make it work. But it's not an easy problem. (For
an aspiring entrepreneur this is a good thing. If it were easy someone else
would have done it already.)

~~~
ess
This is the first stress test, and looks like Django on webfaction is not
holding up too well! Or maybe just my poor coding :)

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ks
I noticed that it took some time to process each answer. If I had made this, I
would probably have loaded the answers and image URLs for each lesson only
once, in a single JS file (preferably a static file). Then you would not have
to connect to the web server for each answer.

And try to keep the user's progress in a cookie if it's possible. Make the
login optional if a user wants to save their progress permanently.

~~~
ess
Yes, I probably should preload all the answers for the questions. However, we
store the mistakes the user does, so the server has to be contacted each time
anyways. And sending back to the server will be useful for later when we mix
in sentences and all that.

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ken
OK, ruthless criticism ahead!

It lists 6 languages, plus "other languages", but won't let me even see what
the others are without registering. ("Hi, Joe's Repair Shop." "Hi, can you
replace the clutch on a '96 Volvo?" "Let me get your name and number before I
answer that." "...")

The flowers that overwrite the words on the top-right of the page are kind of
annoying.

The "help", "about", "staff", etc., links are all 404, which doesn't exactly
look promising.

It claims "3000 words in 3 months", which is over 30 words a day. This seems
pretty incredible. I've studied several languages, and I don't think I've ever
learned 30 new words in a day (much less consistently for months!). According
to
<[http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html>](http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html>),
"The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school
years -- that's 8 words per day". So I'm skeptical a webpage will help me
learn something 4x faster than when it was basically my full-time job.

It says "Read more in our “About the system” page", but I see no such page or
link. Do I have to register for that? (What's the point, then? If I have to
register anyway, I'll just try it.) Do you have any people who have learned
3000 words in 3 months with your method?

It's not clear if this is written, or verbal. Will I be hearing native
speakers? Or is the goal of this simply to read a newspaper?

~~~
ess
Thanks for the criticism. Well, just try it out. 30 words is just two lessons
a day - I think people underestimate the power of repetition in learning. 30
words is easy if you do two lessons a day. Yes, the text stuff is not
completely done yet, it still references parts that are not online yet. That's
why we have the 404s still.

~~~
ken
No problem. I did later try it out, and it looks like those 6 languages are
all that's offered; unfortunately, the language I'm learning right now (and
the previous one) are not among them. Maybe I'll try back later.

Right now I've got a stack of flash cards I carry with me everywhere. Whenever
I'm not being productive at work, I pull them out and flip through them for a
few minutes, sometimes many times a day. If I can learn (and remember) 5 new
words, it's a good day. So I'm still skeptical if the trick is simply
"repetition".

~~~
ess
Well, try this. Click on the chinese course and spend 1 hour on it. You should
be able to do 2 lessons in that time. Write down all 30 words you learnt on a
piece of paper. Sleep on it, wake up the next morning and read the paper and
see how many you still remember. It won't be 30, but I think it will be more
than 5. Don't forget to click the button to view the pictures for the words.

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incomethax
The site looks very wordy. Even if you're in the business of teaching
language, you're users still don't want to see that many words on one page.
Try breaking up all your benefits into separate pages like a tour.

I really like the idea and the interface once you get logged in, although I
don't really like the background color, except for the purple on the bottom of
the front page

~~~
ess
Well, the idea now is just to describe it. Later we'll make it more imagey,
with a video tour and all that on the front page

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huhtenberg
Front page is too busy. While base color scheme is nice and consistent,
whoever decided on help/blog/login colors must be shot. Do the same to whoever
spelled "this is the fastest .." all in lower case and highlighted with lime
background.

Selecting German and clicking on Start brings me to the page featuring a photo
of dude wearing what looks like an Afghani hat. Also bunch of text is in bold
- this is really annoying, you should really ease off on neurolinguistics :)

The overall impression of first two pages is "amateurish", which means that I
am leaving even before I had a chance to learn what the site is about. Work on
your design, make sure it's as visually polished as it gets. Then poll people
again, this time - regarding the functionality of the service.

~~~
ess
You're right, I do need to do design work. But it's tough to be good at
programming and at design too!

~~~
brlewis
I was in the same boat and hired somebody. It wasn't cheap for me, but now
that the dollar has fallen it might be cheap for you to hire someone in the
U.S.

<http://ourdoings.com/2008-02-12>

~~~
ess
I remember your site. It looked very plain, now it looks pretty good! Nice
choices there!

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dkokelley
I personally think it's the wrong approach to learning a language. Plain
memorization is not how languages are learned. There is a lot of context and
structure that must be learned that isn't apparent in the lessons (just listen
to someone with a foreign native language speak English. They will construct
sentences with English words but will do so incorrectly. They are putting them
together how they would if they were using their own language's words).

I certainly think this is a problem ripe for hacking, but I think the
application won't stick. What I've seen so far is a decent supplement to a
traditional course for those who want to broaden their vocabulary repository,
but not (IMO) a complete way to learn a language.

Another note: What about for people who already know a portion of a certain
language? Maybe you could implement a test that checks where they are and
provides lessons accordingly.

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alex_c
A few minor things:

\- after I signed up, it asked me to login. There's no need for this.

\- I went through German lesson 1, but at the bottom it says "You are doing
Lesson 0".

\- progress went over 100% towards the end - a bit surprising \- restarting a
lesson probably shouldn't reset the fact that it was completed

\- I would like to see a list of the lessons I completed, maybe some stats to
see how I did (maybe there is one and I missed it?) to track how I'm doing
over time

\- the links at the bottom of your homepage are broken

\- being asked to pay for more than 3 lessons felt a bit like bait-and-switch,
since the homepage promises 3000 words in big letters, but has no mention of
cost (true, if it had, I might not have registered in the first place)

Al in all, a good idea, and good implementation. Clean, clear, and simple to
use. I'm actually considering signing up.

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powerflex
Are the images coming from flickr? Because I am getting pictures of a baseball
and the word is "playing". Since the images are crowdsourced then maybe there
should be an array of them to convey the idea.

In my opinion there are too many words off the bat to remember if you are new
to the language. How about doing a delay of one where you define a Spanish
word and its image(s) and then the question after next is the image to assign
the Spanish or English word to it, then a few questions later its the Spanish
word to assign the English word to it? That way you get a 1-2 punch to help
memorize it.

~~~
ess
Hit the same button again to get more pictures.

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nextmoveone
Your design is good, I like the colors and buttons.

The second page is a nightmare, too much content not enough call out/
organization, just calls to action.

Registration is painless, contrary to the feedback here.

The app is easy to use, but it's missing _something_. What I'm not sure...?

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jbenz
In terms of graphic design, you want to limit the number of fonts and font
sizes in any given composition. You have a lot of different sizes and some odd
bolding. "The average newspaper..." doesn't need to be bold. In fact, it hurts
the readability.

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run4yourlives
Be more front and center with what it is you're doing. (Which isn't about
"improving your vocabulary") It's about learning another language!

Once I farted around a bit, I liked your site. I should get that interest
within 1-2 seconds though.

~~~
jbenz
I agree, I thought it was more for vocabulary building and it took me a couple
of moments to realize it was about foreign language.

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axod
Why do I need to sign up to use it? What reason is there that I need to create
an account, give email address, choose a password?

Either allow everyone to just use it, or at least show them a demo, or let
them play with something.

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adammichaelc
On the Chinese section (using IE), the pictures won't display. Also, the
characters don't display. Being able to read pin-yin is useless in a Chinese
speaking country. Maybe pin-yin and characters should show.

~~~
ess
The characters only display if you have eastern languages enabled on your PC.
This is microsofts fault, not mine!

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jawngee
If I want to learn english, a page full of it with big fancy words is not
going to help. Need to simplify the verbage throughout the site.

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Alex3917
Did you get the post-prediction idea from a scientific journal article, and if
so could you provide a link?

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wumi
with a great program like Rosetta Stone, why would someone use ingolingo?

Because it's free sure -- but many people have tried and failed many language
learning systems, so what value does ingolingo provide that an established
player like Rosetta Stone doesn't?

~~~
ess
It's different. Ingolingo concentrates on words, Rosetta teaches you how to
use sentences in situations. They complement each other.

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wumi
OK -- as a wanna-be linguist this is definitely a valuable tool.

What library of languages did you use to create your definitions?

~~~
ess
The definitions are human translated for now. We're still working on improving
the translations to match the words - as in running = run and so on.

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staticshock
the entire "Learn together with other people" section reads very cheesy, imho.
i don't think you should focus on whether or not this service gives people any
kind of bragging rights.

the service itself seems valuable, though.

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davidw
I wanted to try Italian, because I speak it fluently, but it's not on the
list.

~~~
ess
Well, we don't have any italian guy to help us!

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ajbatac
be better than mangolanguages.com

