Apply HN: Testable, the social way to study for standardized tests

2 points by sluzorz 10 years ago | 5 comments

Testable is an iPhone game that plays like QuizUp and Trivia Crack but is built to help make studying for standardized exams more fun (like the SAT).

Traditional methods like tutors and books are either outdated or too expensive. Testable helps bridge that gap with gameplay and providing all of it's content for free. It even adapts to each student's needs and targets weak points.

The revenue comes from teachers, schools and prep centers where our dashboard can help influence their classes through data and their own content. Our hope is that students find the game intriguing outside of the classroom so that teachers don't need to spend valuable time doing evaluations.

Our game is out in the App Store for anyone to try out. At the moment, it only serves SAT content (more tests to come soon).

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/testable/id980802068?mt=8

ryporter 10 years ago |

What led you to decide to make the app social? The competitive nature of challenging your friends seems like it would often poorly. (I recall a lot of jealousy when I was in school.) Would your product also be effective in "single-player" mode? Or, maybe you could structure it so that the child is competing with themselves (i.e., trying to best their prior scores).

sluzorz 10 years ago | |

So the app is social because of it's matchmaking mode. You're right about the jealousy part and we decided that it's more beneficial to be playing against a national pool. Amongst high schoolers, we found that students consistently play more because they want to win (or alleviate the pain of losing).

Single player was an idea of ours, but there are a bunch of apps out there like that already. Once our new version comes out (that contains our weekly leaderboard challenges), we might revisit that idea. Some of those challenges include beating your last week's accuracy, etc. ;)

ryporter 10 years ago | | |

Playing against a national pool is a great idea. That alleviates my concerns about jealousy.

I play chess online, using a mode where the site will automatically match me up with another player of similar strength. It's a lot of fun, because almost all of my games are competitive. It seems like it should be easy for you to have some sort of rating system for matching up players, and ratings are also a great way to track your own personal progress. What are your plans along these lines?

sluzorz 10 years ago |

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/testable/id980802068?mt=8