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3 Days to make a AI powered reader for macOS. Can I do it?
Last week I was blown away by the concept known as [Bionic Reading](https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/11jy27e/bionic_reading_method) last week. As someone with ADHD and dyslexia, reading and digesting content is a cumbersome and frustrating task. The concept of Bionic Reading is amazing, but the tech out there seems to be limited so I wanted to build a native minimalist reader (for Mac, iPad & iOS), that obviously has an AI component, because why not.
I floated the concept on Reddit & Twitter and there seems as tho last week. As someone with ADHD and dyslexia, reading and digesting content is a cumbersome and frustrating task.
So I have dared myself to build the mac version over the weekend, my own private Hackathon. I started today, and if you are interested in the concept or just wanna watch me struggle to make this happen then I will be [tweeting](https://twitter.com/mistermeenr/status/1636770792040980480?s=20) about it.
- lisasays 4y agoAn interesting idea - and I would agree that my initial gut-take was that it does seem to make the text easier to process (assuming it is simple enough to begin with). But what do you think of this (rather damning-sounding) retort? https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/11jy27e/comment/jb6031r/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/11jy27e/comment/j... Also: [it] obviously has an AI component, because why not. It's not at all obvious to me that it needs AI (as opposed to say, a more or less obvious heuristics on mundane statistical analysis of how words are formed). If your only justification for it is "why not?" then that's probably an indication that you don't understand the underlying problem to be solved.
- mistermeenr 4y agoThanks for the comment. There are indeed plugins that exist that use the formula of bolding the start of the word right in the browser and they work great! But it doesn't solve the problem for me and many others with ADHD - which is a distraction. The aim here is to strip any distracting content (images, videos, links) to just focus on the written content so digesting that content becomes easier - similar to a kindle. As for your comment regarding AI, 'because why not?' was more of a comment about how everything has an AI component now and not an indication of my lack of research or knowledge here. In short, I plan to use AI (ChatGPT API) to summarize long blocks of text which again helps achieve the goal of digestible, attainable written content for those who struggle with reading and also for those who don't. However, overall if this project succeeds or fails in the eyes of future users is irrelevant at this stage. My goal is to simply challenge myself to 'ship' fast and build something that scratches my own itch.
- ilovenuggies 4y agoI like the idea. I have used Bionic Reader as someone without ADHD and it didn't do much for me. How will you appeal to customers that don't benefit from this technique as there isn't much research to suggest it can help people read faster, in-fact the opposite maybe true.
- mistermeenr 4y agoThe app will ask you if you want it enabled or disabled during the onboarding process. Without, it just becomes a (hopefully) a minimalist and unique reader.