Friday, March 4, 2011

Why doesn't Morse Elmer show a keyboard when training

I decided when I was writing this app that I wanted Morse Elmer to focus on teaching people Morse Code by ear...  I tried to minimize anything that would distract from that.  You might have noticed that I didn't include a Morse Code lookup table anywhere in the app.  I wanted to minimize the visual association of dots and dashes to letters.  I want you to focus on the relationship of the sound of the Morse Code to the letter.  
Another comment has been the lack of a way to enter training results directly on the iOS device.  I personally judged that the iOS text entry interface would be another distraction from learning the Morse Code... I don't want to people distracted from the training trying to find the correct key for the last character they heard... or trying to correct the last character because they accidentally missed the character then falling behind.  I've had a couple friends who've learned Morse Code in the military and they used a type writer... a full keyboard would be an option, but then only for those touch typists out there...
There you go, just the reasoning behind some of my design decisions for Morse Elmer.
I'd love to hear what you think.