2
1 Comment

Launched the Initial Site for SharpKids

We live in such a competitive world that if you have any young children you may want to give them a head start. One way to start on this path is to help the kids learn to read early. Of course if you have time you can teach them yourself, but then again, if you'd rather let the kids learn mostly on their own, a web application might be a life-saver.

Anyways, what started as a simple project for me to learn Vue.JS a bit more deeply resulted in https://SharpKids.online which I registered just today. It features reading aloud English words using the browser's speech synthesizer and a recognition mode in which you hear a word and then must click it on the screen to gain score. Additionally, it includes a Unicode mode (on by default) which displays a simple picture included in the Unicode charset (I was super happy to discover it included well over a thousand pics which I could use in an app like this) when you click the associated word to make the words more memorable. I suppose that should be helpful also for those who would use the app to learn English.

There's still some unwanted behavior and I need to tweak the layout so that it will be usable on small screens like on those smartphones I imagine most preschool kids might have easier access to.

It's free to use but I included a PayPal button to accept money for subscriptions to an email list on which I should announce any major additions to the site (or a domain change for example). I think I may add some math workouts or cognitive puzzles to the site some time later.

Any comments? I do also have some more advanced projects in the pipeline but they do take quite a bit more time to develop...

  1. 1

    Here's my quick feedback:

    • Add some padding around the entire application so it's not butted up against the edge of the browser (at least on desktop)
    • Add some margin between the word buttons - at the moment they are butted up and hard to click
    • Pick a set width for the buttons, as currently they change drastically depending on the size of the word.
    • Donations usually don't work. I'd either remove it or add a paid plan with some special features to incentivise users.

    Good luck!

    1. 2

      Thanks for your input! I'll look into those paddings sometime soon.

      I was definitely trying to make the buttons fixed size but could not figure out a perfect scheme to do that.

      Anyway, I'm also planning to add a new mode soon in which the kid has to click the right word based on the image displayed...

Trending on Indie Hackers
After 10M+ Views, 13k+ Upvotes: The Reddit Strategy That Worked for Me! 42 comments Getting first 908 Paid Signups by Spending $353 ONLY. 24 comments I talked to 8 SaaS founders, these are the most common SaaS tools they use 20 comments What are your cold outreach conversion rates? Top 3 Metrics And Benchmarks To Track 19 comments Hero Section Copywriting Framework that Converts 3x 12 comments Join our AI video tool demo, get a cool video back! 12 comments