

Show HN Parents: StarChart.me — Online star chart for kids - jeffio
http://jeff.io/posts/star-chart-app-for-kids

======
andresmh
Extrinsic motivation, like stars or money, can be effective but it can also
have undesired consequences. For example, when the stars go away, the kid
might end up not doing that activity at all or disliking it even more because
s/he does not perceive it as a valuable thing on its own. Research shows that
extrinsic motivation tends to undermine people's sense of self-determination
(see Deci & Ryan).

~~~
mbrubeck
On the other hand, it's good to set goals, and for kids especially it's good
to have a concrete way to visualize those goals. It's hard for a preschooler
(who can't easily count past 10) to understand what it means to do something
"every day for 2 weeks." (What the heck is a week?)

Heck, it's useful for adults too - lots of popular productivity techniques are
basically grown-up star charts, for example:
[http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-
se...](http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret)

I agree that tying it to an external reward can be risky. It might be better
to do the chart without any reward. Or make sure the kid chooses an activity
as the reward, so it's more like "rewarding myself" instead of "earning
goodies".

------
zacharycohn
Love it! Could this be used for situations too (ex: a bunch of people living
together.) You get stars for doing chores, taking out the trash, cleaning up
cat barf, etc. The person to reach the goal of X number of stars "wins," and
the scores get reset.

A friend of mine uses this system in his house (he lives with 8+ other
people). The points mean nothing, but it really does encourage people to clean
up the cat barf!

------
nchlswu
Great idea. While, I'm not sure about having an online star chart, I'm sure
I'm underestimating the prevalence of technology in children's lives today.

There's an opportunity here to extend this into reinforcement tracking for
other areas as well.

------
yarone
Interesting.

I visited the site, typed-in my child's name, then got stuck.

I couldn't immediately think of one thing that he's working towards (although
now that I think about it...).

What i wanted to do was create the StarChart and send it to my wife to check
it out.

You may want to consider (even further) simplifying the already-simple getting
started process.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, my son is working most on becoming potty
trained. Your mad-lib style form doesn't really work for this case "[name] is
working towards a [???]" Of course, we could also argue the value of using a
tool like this to help with potty training...

~~~
jeffio
How about "Joey" is working towards a "new stuffy" (or whatever). When he goes
potty 10 times, he gets a new stuffy.

I was also thinking that maybe there doesn't need to be an end reward… getting
10 stars may be the reward in itself.

------
dwrowe
Great idea! I like the concept of involving the other family members. Clean
design!

One minor suggestion - I'd make the logo clickable in the blog post. I had to
scroll to the bottom to get a clickable link to view the site

~~~
jeffio
Fixed! Thanks.

------
dusklight
Yeah if you think it's a good idea to train your kids like you train puppies
then this is cool.

Do you really want to bring up children that will happily do whatever they are
told in exchange for some kind of material reward?

~~~
pzxc
Who says it has to be a material reward? Are you arguing against reward-based
systems of any kind and saying that the proper way to raise children is with
negative reinforcement (punishment) only?

------
rbreve
A friend of mine is working on a similar project called
<http://kidsabacus.com>

~~~
corp
Thanks rbreve ... if anyone here checks kidsabacus.com out let me know what
you think. Will be presenting it at SuperConf in Miami in a few weeks, your
comments can help me out with the pitch.

------
yumraj
A friend of mine has a similar iPhone app: <http://irewardchart.com/>

~~~
sloak
Thanks for the link. It looks like a nicely made app. Can you tell your friend
the feedback form on the website is broken? It redirects to a google
spreadsheet which forgets your initial form.

~~~
satyajit
Thanks for letting know! I took care of it.

------
mwdev
This is great! I'd love to be able to have a name of a chart and a picture.
This way I can put 'Johnny Draws an A' and at the end is a picture of a toy or
ice cream.

------
jeffio
The link is to the blog announcement. If you want to get directly to the app,
the URL is <http://starchart.me/>.

------
kefs
Great site! I was just browsing your blog and saw that you're also in
Victoria, BC! Great to know there are other HN/startup folks in the city. :)
Good luck!

------
TeMPOraL
Haha, very nice :).

I feel like using it myself for self-motivation :).

~~~
jeffio
Yes, like for every 10 lines of code you write you get 1 star towards 10
minutes on hacker news. 10 stars later and you're golden!

~~~
abyssknight
Aw, LoC as a measurement? Can we use negative LoC for lines removed? :)

~~~
callahad
It works both ways: For every 10 LoC removed, you lose 10 minutes of HN time.
After all, you wouldn't want to interrupt the kind of flow that's letting you
get some refactoring in, would you?

------
klochner
did you do this before Ze Frank launched star.me?

~~~
citricsquid
Domain Create Date:30-Oct-2008 20:35:59 UTC

~~~
jeffio
Ha, it looks like I registered this domain name a month after star.me in 2008.
As I mentioned in the post, I have been using this for a couple of years with
my son and only just now decided to open it up.

