Checkpoint 1 · Card Archetype Design

Rule on the flashcard direction — 8 quick calls

Here's the chain so far: we asked six made-up "persona" readers — stand-ins for different kinds of learners, like a 12-year-old (KID), a busy executive (EXEC), or a parent helping with homework (PARENT) — what they'd want from each flashcard type. We built a visual gallery of mockups from that. Then we had those same personas grade the gallery: 26 things they loved, 2 they liked, 1 they merely tolerated, 4 they said were missing. We then fixed the 4 misses (bigger tap targets, icon-based register tags, a new KID vocabulary card, a reused "where am I" progress bar). Now it's your call — do we build the real thing to match this gallery, and how do we resolve a few specific trade-offs inside it?

26 loved / 2 liked / 1 tolerated / 4 missed — now fixed Gallery: wordsense-reviews.pages.dev/card-mockups 8 calls, ~2 min
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Quick glossary

A few words used below

Persona codes (KID, EXEC, PARENT, NOMAD, RETIREE, DEVOTEE) — nicknames for six kinds of learners we designed for: a kid, a busy executive, a parent, a well-traveled multilingual person, an older low-tech learner, and someone memorizing a fixed list of religious vows.

Register — how formal or casual a word/phrase is (e.g. "money" vs. slang for money).

Allomorph — the different shapes a word-part takes depending on what it's attached to (e.g. the Indonesian prefix "ber-" becomes "be-" or "bel-" in a few words).

CEFR — the standard European scale for how good someone is at a language, from A1 (just starting) to C2 (near-native).
The calls

8 decisions

Click an answer button on each. Add a note only if you want to explain more.
CD1
Should we build the real flashcards to match this gallery's direction?
In plain terms: the gallery is the blueprint. Saying yes here means we start building actual working cards that look and behave like it, archetype by archetype. Evidence: the personas loved 26 of 33 things we showed them, and the 4 misses have since been fixed.
Recommend: yes
See the whole gallery →
CD2
When someone studies a grammar rule, should the first screen they see be the hard version (no hints) by default — with an easier, step-by-step version offered only once, right when they turn that mode on?
This is a real trade-off: harder-by-default is sharper and more respectful of people who want to be challenged, but it risks losing someone who wanted an easier on-ramp. We're proposing: ship only the no-hints version as the default, and offer the gentler version as a one-time choice exactly when a learner turns that feature on — never silently softened for everyone.
Recommend: bare only, scaffold as one-time opt-in offer
See the Grammar/rule section — try the "frontDifficulty" toggle →
CD3
Should example sentences be tagged by how formal or casual they are (formal / everyday / slang / regional), shown as small icon+text labels?
Honest cost: the screen design for this is already done and looks good. What's NOT done is teaching our sentence-writing pipeline to actually produce and label sentences at each formality level — that's new, ongoing work for whoever writes the content, not a one-time build.
See the Vocabulary reveal — try the register toggle →
CD4
Some word-parts (like the Indonesian prefix "ber-") change spelling depending on the word they attach to. Should the grammar-rule screen show a full table of ALL the shape-variants at once, instead of just one example?
Today's design only shows one example row, not the full table. Building the full table is a small but real addition to the next phase of grammar-card work.
See "Formation" in the Grammar/rule reveal (Rule 1 — ber-) →
CD5
We built a small progress strip that shows "where am I in the course" on grammar-rule cards. Should we reuse the same strip on passage/reading cards too?
It's the same visual block already built — this is asking whether to apply it to a second card type, not build something new.
Recommend: yes
See "Position in the system" on the Passage/content-study (DEVOTEE) card →
CD6
For kid learners, we designed a fast, game-like card style with no menus or toolbars visible. Should this only ever turn on for profiles marked as kids — never shown to adult profiles, and never a site-wide setting?
This confirms the game-paced style is a per-profile toggle, not something that could accidentally show up for an adult account.
Recommend: yes
See Vocabulary — click the "KID — game-paced front" tab →
CD7
For adult/professional learners, should we plan (not build yet) an end-of-session summary like "You can now negate any noun or verb," "12 of 20 structures learned," plus a CEFR skill-level badge?
This isn't built — there's no results screen yet at all. This is only asking whether to add this idea to that future screen's plan now, so it's not forgotten later.
See the "Capability" block in the Vocabulary reveal →
CD8
One item the persona review flagged as real but not visible in any picture: for parent/family accounts, notifications should never use guilt/pressure language, and no unsafe ads should ever show — with zero exceptions, for everyone, not a per-profile setting.
Bundling this alone because it's the one item the re-review explicitly called "can't be judged from a picture" — it's a policy decision, not a visual one, so it needs your sign-off separately from the rest of the gallery.
Recommend: yes, ratify as global policy