Final Project Idea
04 Nov 2025
MānoaLingo: Capture, Enrich, and Review the Words You Meet
Authors
Overview
The problem: Many UHM students meet new foreign-language words in classes, conversations, or media, but it’s hard to capture them quickly, keep the context, and review consistently.
The solution: MānoaLingo lets students instantly save words/phrases (text or voice). In the background, AI enriches each entry with definitions, translations, and multiple usage examples written for different tones/situations (e.g., casual, polite/formal, academic), plus tags (food, campus life, travel) and timestamps. The app then provides gentle flashcard-style reviews so students can study by topic or by month.
Inspiration: the quick-capture feel of nani.now (by Catnose) and the game-like periodic review loop popularized by Quizlet (and similar apps), adapted for vocabulary learning in busy campus life at UHM.
Approach
Once a word/phrase is created, other pages let users browse and study:
- Landing page — What the app is and why it helps.
- Capture page — Add via text or voice; show AI-enriched fields including tone-specific examples (casual/formal/etc.).
- Library page — Browse saved items; filter by tag/date.
- Study mode — Flashcard-style review with a light spaced-repetition cadence and progress bars.
- Settings page — Review frequency, language preferences, export, and contact email for reminders.
As this is a web app (not a native app), we’ll use email reminders as a notification stand-in to prompt periodic study until in-browser notifications are enabled.
Admins (in later iterations) can monitor inappropriate content and curate tag categories.
Use case ideas
- A student hears a Japanese phrase on campus, adds it with voice; MānoaLingo stores it with definition, casual and formal examples, and a campus life tag.
- Before a trip, the student filters travel and runs a quick study session.
- At month-end, the student reviews everything captured in October after receiving an email reminder.
Progress tracking
- Track completion by collection (per tag or month): e.g., “Campus Life - Cycle 1: 100% (each item answered correctly twice); Cycle 2: 80% complete.”
- Per-item history (again/hard/good), next-review date, streaks, and gentle gamified cues.
Beyond the basics
After the core flow works, possible enhancements include:
- Pronunciation playback or speech-practice.
- “Word streaks” and gentle reminders.
- Export study lists (CSV/Anki).
- Community word boards to discover trending vocabulary.