Problems in Spanish Flashcard Making
Builder vs user's mindset
When I was writing my post, Visualizing vocabulary, I thought it would be really simple to ask AI to generate images and create an app out of it.
However, as I was trying to make my own manually today, I realized there were many important elements that are missing.
Here are my problems
The image generation process takes a long time. Dalle is super slow. In fact, all the AI image generators are slow. I was really annoyed waiting for 30 seconds to generate an image that might be good and representative.
I need a translation from Spanish to English first and add an extra image generation prompt.
Even if everything is good, I might still be unsatisfied, I need to find a way to cancel and tweak my inputs.
I do not care if the image is pretty, but it needs to give me a really strong association with words.
I need a place to store my images. I fill it in a big folder already as I have 25 images. What if I want to remember several hundred words?
I want sound!!! Looking at the image is really boring. How can I generate and pronounce sounds?
I want side notes! Looking at the word is hard to remember. I want to have the context from Harry Potter so I can know how and when to use it. But also, writing those notes is quite annoying. I want an easy way to match the notes with the word.
I don’t want to stare at my laptop all the time! I love circling words in my Harry Potter Spanish book. I want to have as little time on my laptop as possible.
After 1 hr of testing and with only 20 useful images out, I was annoyed. I realized I imagined it as a programming problem but not as a learning problem. So I underestimated how customized I needed my tool to be. I finally realize why lots of programmers that build lots of fancy but useless products. As a person really trying to learn Spanish, I don’t care how many features my flashcard app has, but I want to have something that can actually make me engage more in learning, and less in operational work.
Hence, I decided to throw away all my imagination of productionizing this tool. I just want to selfishly make this flashcard thing as helpful as it can be for me. I don’t mind dragging all the files to wherever. Using my hand to generate images is fine as long as it’s quick and simple.
I noticed the discrepancy between the builder and the user in the development of any tool. The real needs that a builder or a programmer imagines can be really different from the user, due to the lack of experience of the own tool they make. A builder can imagine, “Yes an AI auto flashcard generator will be so simple and easy to build!” Yet, they might not fully grasp the subtleties and specific requirements, like how an image should strongly and accurately trigger associations for the word being learned. The absence of this firsthand experience can lead to a mismatch between the basic structure of the tool and its intended purpose. While builders focus on crafting a visually appealing and functional tool, learners are more concerned with enhancing their learning experience. The nuanced difference between possessing exceptional craftsmanship and addressing immediate problems is the gap between the builder’s mindset and the user’s mindset. (highlight to remind my future self)
Yes, yes. My builder mindset is debating with my user’s mindset today.
