Looking for some UX ideas for solving a lurnby challenge.

Hi @roznoshchik 👋

It looks like an interesting product you're working on and a very interesting UX challenge to try and solve.

I think you raise a valid concern about how search may prevent people from seeing topics they hadn't considered. This was my initial idea until you mentioned that.

I did have a few ideas you could explore though. I'd suggest trying a few things out and getting this in front of users though to hear their feedback first hand.

1. Order the topics alphabetically. At the very least, it'll make it easier to find items in the list (e.g. if I'm looking for "biases" I know I can scroll past the topics that start with A). The benefit is it doesn't hide topics like search might, but does let people skip ahead.
2. Explore a different layout for the list of topics. Perhaps one or two fixed-width columns. The variable widths of each topic currently means the eye has to jump around on each row. You may find the list could be too long though doing this.
3. Could topics be grouped into higher level categories? The current format means the problem will accumulate over time as more topics are added. Could a user create categories of topics, and then click into the categories to get more specific topics?
4. Explore making the topic selection optional (if it isn't already) and encourage users to do it after they've gone through a page of text. This would let users focus on one task at a time. For example,
   • task 1) highlight all of the sections in a page of text first
   • task 2) go through all of the highlighted sections and add topics and notes

I'm interested to see how you tackle this so please follow up with an update!

Seems like the core problem is easily finding topics who’s content matches the new highlight.

What if you had smart filtering?

When you click “Make New Highlight”...

1. The backend matches past highlights with the new one
2. Finds what topic the matches belong to
3. Pushes those topic tags to the top

You should be filtering by the CONTENT of the topics, not the topic names themselves.

This may be technically difficult but if chunking ideas is core to the experience, it’s worth it.