Show HN Parents: StarChart.me — Online star chart for kids

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).

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.<p>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!

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

Interesting.<p>I visited the site, typed-in my child's name, then got stuck.<p>I couldn't immediately think of one thing that he's working towards (although now that I think about it...).<p>What i wanted to do was create the StarChart and send it to my wife to check it out.<p>You may want to consider (even further) simplifying the already-simple getting started process.<p>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...

Great idea! I like the concept of involving the other family members. Clean design!<p>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

Yeah if you think it's a good idea to train your kids like you train puppies then this is cool.<p>Do you really want to bring up children that will happily do whatever they are told in exchange for some kind of material reward?

A friend of mine is working on a similar project called <a href="http://kidsabacus.com" rel="nofollow">http://kidsabacus.com</a>

A friend of mine has a similar iPhone app: <a href="http://irewardchart.com/" rel="nofollow">http://irewardchart.com/</a>

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.

The link is to the blog announcement. If you want to get directly to the app, the URL is <a href="http://starchart.me/" rel="nofollow">http://starchart.me/</a>.

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!

Haha, very nice :).<p>I feel like using it myself for self-motivation :).

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