I wanted to share a bit of our plans for this year with you.
Our mission is to become the best tool for self-learning anything.
To make that happen, we’ll do the following in Q1 2023:
- Together with my friend and UX designer Hans, we’re making big improvements to make the three main functions (note-taking, mindmapping and retrieval practice) work smoother.
We’ve already started on this with some big improvements, listed below (hello color-coded highlighting!).
- We’ve marked some features for removal which don’t align with our mission. You can also find them below. If you’re using one of these features and would be sad to see it go away, you can reply to this email with a detailed explanation of how you’re using it, so we can evaluate and reconsider.
- We’ve started publishing articles, guides, maps and other that help you get the most out of Traverse, as well as become a master in learning how to learn. You can find some early posts in the new resource section on our homepage. Also here I’m getting amazing support from Raleigh, Jesus and Felicia - all of them (pre-)medical students.
(Btw, if you’re a (pre-)med student as well, the teach-as-you-learn community by YouTuber and Traverse partner JR is a great place to master your studies together with like-minded peers.)
So, now for the new features already released:
New note editor
We’ve released a completely new editor which gives us a lot of new possibilities down the road. Here’s a few which we’ve implemented already:
Color-coded highlighting
You can now color-code your highlights to fit your study system - ideal if you’re a visual learner.
Fast flashcard cloze-with-context creation
The cool thing about the new highlights is that you can create flashcards from them with a single click. It automatically selects the relevant context, and lets you create either a cloze deletion (fill-in-the-blank), or any regular flashcard.
Resizable images
Images are now resizable!
Colored note links
Another nice touch for visual learners: links to notes automatically assume the color of the target note.
Making the Mindmap rock solid
After the editor, we’re now working on making the mindmap a rock solid tool for mapping out your thoughts. Below are a few new things you can do. Expect bigger improvements in the coming weeks (hint: Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V!), as well as lots of bug fixes.
Mindmap multi select
You can now hold shift to select multiple notes at once. You can currently only drag the selection. Let me know what other functions you’d like to apply to multiple notes at once.
Mindmap background drawing
You can now draw anywhere on the mindmap, including on the background. Those small visual scribbles can really help you grasp a new concept.
(Btw the drawing feature is not perfect yet and will also be improved in the next weeks)
Flashcards
After the mindmap, we’ll start working on improving the flashcards. Expect things like custom scheduling, quick suspending and quickly peeking your map and notes during reviews. Here’s one feature released already:
Edit during reviews
You can now edit your flashcards seamlessly without breaking your review flow. Simply select
Edit from the ... menu, make your changes, save and continue reviewing :)Resource section
Head to the new Resource section on the homepage to learn about meta-learning, study strategies, and get inspired by Traverses others have created.
Features marked for removal
Next, the sad part: the following features are marked for removal. They’re not directly aligned with our vision of helping people learn better, but still cost a lot of time to maintain (if you rely on them, let me know how you use them and I may change my mind if your use case is convincing).
Academies
Academies will stop working from the 1st of February (until then your academy remains available at <academy-url>/a/<academy-name>).
Instead, we now offer you to publish an SEO optimized page in our resource section, where you can showcase and share your Traverses. Just reply to this email and I’ll set one up for you.
Import from web page
Simply importing stuff from all over the web removes the critical filter necessary for learning, so we’ve decided to remove this feature (however, we may bring back something better in the future in the form of a Chrome extension).
PDF, Google Docs, Notion import
These import functions don’t work consistently. Instead, we might bring them back in the future in the form of embeds in our new editor.
Custom HTML and scripts
Similarly, we aim to build more powerful editor embeds instead.
