Benkyo Box is available for beta testing

By Juan Arzola

We live in times where our digital words are slowly drifting away from the actual words we use. Phones autocomplete before we can even recall what we were saying, we have all the time in the world to craft and edit messages to our coworkers in ways we wouldn't actually say them and we can afford to Google the perfect synonym to make us sound good.

That's all fine when we are in our computers, but in the real world the brain doesn't have autocomplete and will only be able to say, in real time, words that are in its surface lexicon (the vocabulary that it can readily recall). This surface lexicon can get a little boring if we don't actively add to it with new experiences and studies related to those experiences.

I built Benkyo Box because I like taking notes in order to remember facts around me, but I didn't want to bury these facts in an archival-style note taking app. I want to actually be surfaced these facts, study them, then stop seeing them when I know them. Sometimes they are technical facts but honestly, I mostly want to remember mundane facts like what types of plants and rocks I saw in a trip so that when I recount my travels, the story is actually interesting and not "I saw plants". I also don't want these facts to clutter my notes app, they need to be elsewhere.

There's plenty of flashcard apps out there with their own priorities. Here's Benkyo Box priorities:

1. It must be fast to input of 1 or many cards. As fast and straightforward as creating a new note in the Notes app.
2. Simple interface that doesn't overwhelm with too many tabs, hamburger menus, etc. Use an unified navigation that minimizes the screens and states the app can stay in for a prolonged time.
3. I love learning from pictures and photos so I want to learn via photo annotations.
4. Surface cards to me via notifications so that I actually remember them.
5. Spaced repetition (studying on intervals) is useful and important, and I want to know what's upcoming. Make the schedule easy to see in a calendar.
6. Both question and answer should support multiple lines. Sometimes I want to recall list of things.
7. Behave and look native, familiar but sprinkle fun here and there. Also, be an awesome iPad app (support everything that other apps ignore, like drag and drop, multi window, etc).

For the first beta I have accomplished some of these things, but there's still work to do. There's more polish needed and missing features. Here's are peek on a few of the things that I want to improve in the short term so you can get an idea of what's coming up:

1. Add arrows to image annotation options.
2. Allow rectangle annotations to be dragged.
3. Customize some SF Symbols.
4. Add more notification options like turning off sounds/vibration.
5. Improve dynamic text and accessibility in certain screens like the image editor.
6. Better persistence of Quick Entry data (back it up so that you don't lose it if the app if killed while you are typing).
7. Add the option of excluding a folder from studies.

The app does run on macOS but I will not focus on it until I release iPhone and iPad.

I hope Benkyo Box becomes part of your continuous learning journey!