

Ask YC: Critique/comment on our webapp - jasonb05

At the start of July myself and 3 friends committed our spare time to building a functional webapp within a month. We would love any feedback you guys can offer.<p>Spicy Elephant
http://spicyelephant.com<p>Niche: Learning and memorization (flashcards)
Monetization: subscription model (premium account)
Core Advantage: web-based advanced (supermemo) scheduling algorithm (only study when you need to)<p>cheers
======
yan
Nice design. Don't know if I'd pay for the market, but I am not the target
market.

Also, typo on the first sample flashcard: "It is proven that if you review
material to[ extra o] soon and you waste your time, too late and you have to
relearn. Intelligent scheduling is about training at the point of forgetting."

~~~
noodle
are you saying the phrase "too soon" should be "to soon"?

thats not right.

~~~
yan
No, I added the 'extra o'. It says 'to' originally.

------
nostrademons
1\. Why not have people enter their answers onto the web form instead of using
the honor system? The answers all seem to be textual, you could check them
yourself and score them instantly.

2\. Even if you don't auto-score them, it'd help to show the answer. It's
sometimes hard to remember what you just said when you have to evaluate how
well you said it.

3\. The "Study" link needs to be more prominent when viewing a deck.

4\. How's this better than paper flashcards?

~~~
mmilo
Hi there, I'm one of the 4 folks working on spicyelephant and in answer to
your questions:

1\. We would not like to limit people to purely textual content, as it stands
now you are able to include images in both questions and answers. Further to
that, it would be hard to rate a person's recall based purely on whether they
got the answer right (e.g. it could have been a random guess)

2\. Could you elaborate on where you were failing to see the answers, because
answers should definitely appear when studying.

3\. Definitely something we can address, thanks for raising it.

4\. The real gist of the application isn't in the electronic representation of
flash cards, but the algorithm behind it that keeps track of how well you're
recalling the answers and then let's you know when the best time is to study
again. This studying methodology is known as spaced repetition
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition>)

Again, thank you and everyone else who has taken the time to take a look and
comment, your feedback and suggestions are all greatly appreciated.

~~~
nostrademons
2\. It's not that I'm failing to see the answers, it's that I'd like somewhere
to write my answer and then (even if it's not automatically scored) show me
what I wrote and how it compares to the real answer. Otherwise, I'm not
_doing_ anything, I'm just passively clicking through cards.

Same reason I _write_ code instead of just reading language manuals. I used to
do the latter, but it doesn't really teach well. Unless you're actively doing
stuff and getting feedback on how you did, you're not really learning.

------
rrf
Congratulations on pulling the app together so quickly. Out of curiosity, is
there research to suggest that using flashcards is a superior way of learning?
For example, for languages, isn't it better to practice with a native speaker
to understand the subtleties of the language, expressions, etc.? Personally, I
am now more likely to rely on the Internet as a store of facts, like capitals
of the world, rather than commit such facts to memory.

~~~
baker
Thanks for the kind words.

"Personally, I am now more likely to rely on the Internet as a store of facts,
like capitals of the world, rather than commit such facts to memory."

One of the reasons we were motivated to build this application was the
observation that people were 'outsourcing' their memory, eg. just Googling for
information. Outsourcing our memory limits are ability to think deeply.

Why bother remembering words when you can just sound out the word each time?
Why bother remembering their meaning when you can just do a search on Google?

~~~
rrf
I'm no brain expert, but I'm not sure that we use the same part of the brain
for remembering facts as we do for thinking deeply. Happy to be proved wrong
on that.

------
jasonb05
I captured some thoughts about my involvement in this project in a post:
[http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2008/08/my-experiences-
on-...](http://www.neverreadpassively.com/2008/08/my-experiences-on-one-month-
startup.html)

------
h8ck0r
i got to this and was confused about what your app does

"2. We intelligently organize when to study"

------
alaskamiller
Is there a way to hide the answers to replicate real flashcards? All I'm
seeing are two column lists.

~~~
jasonb05
there's a study mode for decks which can be accessed in the listing of decks
(far left) or on the desk describe page (top right).

the listing you describe is a deck details page not intended for study.

you make a good point regarding the accessibility of the study feature.

