Alphaliterate
An advanced new form of visual to help you understand complexity.
What is it?
A system for learning foreign alphabets quickly and painlessly. Learn to read Cyrillic in one hour. Learn to read Arabic in four hours.
How it works
Learning a new language is challenging enough on its own. But learning a new language that is written in a foreign alphabet makes things even more difficult. Your brain is dealing with two novel kinds of information at once: a language and an alphabet. That overloads your brain, which isn't built for multitasking. If you have ever tried and given up on learning Japanese or Russian or Arabic, this is probably one reason.
Alphaliterate solves this by separating the alphabet learning from the language learning. It allows you to learn a new alphabet by reading English language stories written in another alphabet. That way your brain can spend all its processing power on the alphabet since it doesn't have to worry about foreign grammar or vocabulary.
Background
Unlike most of my innovations, which were created to solve business problems, I devised Alphaliterate to solve a personal problem. Years ago, I was trying to learn Japanese using the now-defunct LiveMocha. At the time, it allowed me to do all the learning in the Latin alphabet, so I could focus purely on vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Then one day they changed the user experience and I was no longer able to do my lessons in Latin characters. So I quit learning.
Not long after, I decided that it would be interesting to solve the problem of alphabet learning. How could I efficiently learn new writing systems for when I traveled to another country and had to read signs and menus? If you can simply language learning by removing the alphabet variable, why not simplify alphabet learning by removing the language variable?
After a number of ill-conceived attempts at creating a quizzing system to imitate Duolingo, I finally realized that none of that was necessary. Rather than focusing on miserable flash cards to memorize characters, why not make the process fun? Giving the learner a reading piece, something from classic literature that they would actually enjoy provide an intrinsic motivation in addition to the learning itself. The story would be its own reward.
Business applications
Alphaliterate is a demonstration of my product design skills. It is pure gamefication, no amateurish points, badges, or leaderboards, and it takes an ultra-lean approach: the whole thing uses Google Docs, so no additional software engineering needed.
The principles I used to create Alphaliterate can be applied to your technology or business projects:
Improve employee training by breaking up skills into micro-skills, making it easier and less intimidating to learn.
Don't waste resources on cliched gamefication approaches. Identify the intersection of natural user motivations and your business goals and create custom solutions.
Solve problems using innovative repurposing of existing technologies.