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

Re:Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Space... by bdr on Monday April 13, 2009 @08:28PM (#560772)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Space... by gsaines on Monday April 13, 2009 @09:37PM (#560836)

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?

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Re:Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Space... by bdr on Tuesday April 14, 2009 @12:42AM (#561018)

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.

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Re:Ask HN: Feedback on Skritter, Learning Chinese with Space... by girk on Friday May 01, 2009 @01:59PM (#588854)

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.

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