I'm a long time lurker that recently quit my job to work on my own projects, a lot due to the inspiration from Hacker News.<p>Now I have published my first serious project, an app for learning how to write Japanese characters. It's the app I always wanted but couldn't find when I was studying. It tries to be simple to use, you just start the quiz and go with the flow. There's no need to plan and manage your studies, and it uses spaced repetition for better retention.<p>There's a promo page with more details up at http://www.kanjibyhand.com.<p>It's only for Android so far. The free version includes hiragana and katakana:<p>https://market.android.com/details?id=se.tokotoko.android.kanabyhand<p>The paid version includes (a lot of) kanji:<p>https://market.android.com/details?id=se.tokotoko.android.kanjibyhand<p>I'd be grateful for any comments or ideas for how to market this app!
Hi,<p>I think you could market it this way :<p>You are in the language learning industry. In learning, pratice is key. Learning is a journey (takes a some/lot of time).
(expertise is 10 000 hours of work/experience)<p>What is good about learning is there are levels (ie. beginner, intermediate, advanced). For the software/app maker, it means there are different needs to answer. For your potential user, it may mean, there is a potential long term gratification "I am a beginner user today, and tommorrow I can become an advanced user". "I can make progress."<p>- How to make your visitors sin up ?
Break down the different japanese apprenticeship levels. Show your user, examples of instant gratification. Even if they are beginner, they can get something.<p>- How to make your users stay and use your app ?
Gratification at every little step they make. ie. Every time they write a good answer.<p>In other words, I think adding a layer of gamification would be interesting for you. It would spark your visitors interest, grow your user's engagement.<p>- How to make people come ?
Maybe by allowing your users to challenge their friends. Ervery time your user reach a milestone, allow him to post on Twitter/Facebook something like this : "In two weeks, I allready completed X,Y,Z levels of Japanese. What about you ?" (far from perfect, but you get the point).<p>Having a freemium business model is a good idea. It lowers the barrier entry for the user.<p>In addition to that:
- Define the the user tipping point : when are they addicted. What does it means to be addicted to your app.
- Define the right metrics to analyze.<p>Many startups in the learning industry have successfully implemented a gamification layer in their application.
You may take a look at codecademy.com and veri.com<p>HTH and Good luck.<p>PS: Great ratings show you're into something.
I don't have an Android device, so I haven't played around with your free version, but I'm a big fan of using spaced repetition software (SRS) for language learning. Here are some questions:<p>Is your SRS algorithm based on one of the published Supermemo algorithms? If so, is it one of the older ones like SM-2 or one of the complex ones that eliminates the "whoops I missed a day" problem?<p>Rather than make a custom deck for Anki or Mnemosyne, you're reinventing the wheel a lot by writing your own SRS. Is the main reason so you can have that awesome-sounding handwriting matching feature? Does that handwriting feature work flawlessly for native Japanese control groups? Have you found that the Supermemo/Anki/Mnemosyne approach of users self-reporting their accuracy isn't as reliable as using handwriting recognition?<p>As for marketing, there's a sizeable community of people already using spaced repetition software for learning Japanese, and they tend to be centered around forum.koohii.com and alljapaneseallthetime.com (although I'm not sure how much activity the latter gets nowadays). They use SRS to commit to memory the mnemonics in James Heisig's Remembering the Kanji. That community is probably the only place in the world where you can find multiple people who achieved competent Japanese literacy in a month or two. So show them what you've got and ask them how it stacks up to what they used and pick their brains for suggestions!
I'm also an app developer myself. Some suggestions:
Price: use 7.99, people will still read 7, it's hard to believe but yes, they can't be bothered to read or remember 3 digits. Careful with 8+ though, some will read "10". Apply some discounts periodically to see how people react to different pricing points.
To reduce Google's cut you can use taxes in google checkout (google's 30% doesn't apply to the taxes).
Permissions: why are you discovering accounts, using the authentication credentials, etc etc etc?? some people are going to decide not to download you app because of this. Fortunately for you, most don't care about privacy, permissions or anything at all, but I wouldn't install your app myself, for example. You're requesting lots of permissions and to me it seems that a kanji writing app could do without them.<p>I don't see the market licensing permission, by the way. You're still in time to add protection, which is CRITICAL. I can't stress this enough. Your app WILL be cracked and distributed online if protection is weak or non-existent. And given your price point, I'd say most working copies of your app will be pirated. Some people will say hey, it's no use, it's going to be cracked anyway!. Sorry but no, it doesn't have to be that way. If protection is good it might get cracked after some months, and then maybe only for rooted devices. Check out this Google IO talk <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnSNCXR9fbY" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnSNCXR9fbY</a> and this android developer blog article <a href="http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/09/securing-android-lvl-applications.html" rel="nofollow">http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/09/securing-andr...</a>
There is an automated app cracker around <a href="http://androidcracking.blogspot.com/p/antilvl.html" rel="nofollow">http://androidcracking.blogspot.com/p/antilvl.html</a> , try it on your app when you implement LVL to make sure it doesn't work. There's also some nasty stuff called LuckyPatcher that patches the odex files dierctly on rooted phones (so it can modify your code even if you verify your dex file's checksum and your signature etc); it doesn't work on all apps either.
Long time CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) language learner here..<p>I'm wondering, you say it's the app you always wanted but couldn't find, but I'm sure if you looked during your Jpns studies you MUST have heard of Skritter (<a href="http://www.skritter.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.skritter.com/</a>) before? They have what I would say is the best app for learning to write Hanzi or Kanji.. curious how would you say your app compares with them?<p>I will be checking out your app either way, great to have more options!
Nice idea. I absolutely understand what you're getting at since I've had the exact same idea/need in the past.<p>I really like your design but one thing springs to mind when I look at your screencaps.
When I'm learning how to write a complicated kanji, I'd greatly appreciate having as much room on the screen as possible.
It affords greater precision and the details are better shown.
So maybe make the drawing area bigger?<p>Now having tried it for just a minute or two, I'm not sure I entirely like your recognition algorithm. It said I was wrong!
Seriously though, while my hand writing is pretty sloppy at times, I'd still like to think my hand writing is legible.
The algorithm seems a lot less sensitive about straight lines than some of the more curly bits. Take あ for instance. I while the second stroke was well off it accepted that while rejecting the third stroke for not bending back enough way at the end.<p>Since algorithmic solution is rather hard I might actually suggest going a whole different direction.
If you've ever tried applications like Anki, they ask the user herself to select the result, which to me seems to work fairly well.
The least I would want is probably some kind of intermediate level in between Good and Wrong.<p>Hope it helps and good luck!
Good work... and from all of us Japanese language students, thanks! I wanted to amplify the comments from @politikus with some additional observations:<p>- market to children, or really to parents trying to teach their children Japanese (like me!)
- market to young students, themselves, not their parents<p>The above two user groups may be mutually exclusive. In either way, I would highly recommend you translate your app into Japanese. It's your biggest market, no?<p>The SRS/SM-2 algorithm you're using might need some tweaking to support leaderboard & scoring like @politkus mentions -- thinking about kids, they love to compete. I would recommend moving more towards more gamification.<p>Harder to do on Android(1) than iOS, but I would recommend using IAP for additional lessons. With kids, the goal you're shooting for is to have the kids bug their parents to buy more levels (!) or the older kids to brag to their friends.<p>And finally, why not use Parse.com instead of SyncAdapter? It would give you both an easier path towards iOS as well as potentially a web based dashboard, etc?<p><i>Gambatte kudasai!</i><p>(1) My opinion only, of course, I'd like to learn more about in-app purchase options on Android.
Congratulations on launching this!<p>Have you considered scaling back the free version to a portion of Hiragana and Katakana? (Maybe half?) And maybe throw in a few simple kanji? My thinking is that there is going to be a large portion of users who can immediately see the value of the app when they first start learning Japanese, but won't ever make it to the point in their own study of the language where they're trying to write Kanji. I think a lot of people don't stick with it.<p>I've spent a small fortune in my pursuit of Japanese (and would probably buy this too, if it were on iOS.) But if I only paid for the books and tools I stuck with or got more than cursory value from, I would probably reduce my purchasing by about 90%. My wife just said 95%. :)
One of the things I really struggled with when learning kanji, say past the 400-500 character mark was retention. Basic repetitive memorisation techniques no longer worked for me and it was only when I found some book that taught the origins of every radical that I really began to retain what I was learning.
If you could include something for that style of learning in a future version I think it would help your users a lot.
Looking nice but for some reason after getting one wrong it often shows the previous mistake rather than the current one. Here's a screen shot of what I mean:<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Wls9r.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/Wls9r.png</a><p>I'm running Android 4.0.3 on a Galaxy Nexus if that's of any help.
I didn't see any mention of this on your website - is there support for memorizing the included vocab as well, or is it just there for reference? This feature would be useful for someone who'd like to learn vocab while they're learning the kanji (although this obviously isn't the traditional RtK method).
Hey, great job on this. I've just started playing around with the Kana one and will get into the Kanji one at some point, too. I personally think it's well worth $9, but with most apps being a lot cheaper, you might alienate casual Japanese students.
I'm currently learning the (traditional, not simplified) Hanzi, which are pretty much just the Kanji; I'm interested in using your app to help my learning. Is it possible to add some Kanji to the free version so that I can try it out?
> ideas for how to market this app<p>Make one for iPhone & iPad, in terms of value-for-money this is much better than marketing Android-only app.