Don't forget to maintain your physical fitness level. Doing something till total physical exhaustion (like weight-lifting) combined with tranquil sauna sessions always help me through these down moments.
When I read what you wrote about being "pressured by the tutorial", I had an "a-ha!" moment, I know what you mean.
The site's first users came from language classes who learn English as their second language (at beginner and pre-intermediate level) and teachers send new flashcards to them after every class -- that functionality of the site (teacher/student accounts, sending flashcards etc) is not shown to the public atm. These beginner English students had problems navigating the site and after introducing the "aggressive tutorial" student retention became a lot better. That's the story, this is a result of a pretty hectic development and there were just no time to really think about these issues.
I'm in the process of redesigning the site aesthetics (I'll try to do a better job this time), I will really rethink the tutorial too, thanks.
You said you were a little bit confused during practice because you thought you needed to type the answers, I see and I'm sure this will bite other users too so I will do something about it sometime next week. When you think about it you'll find that thinking about the answer is enough (and it is fast), typing is unnecessary most of the time.
There is no clear/professional business plan for this thing so it may be destined to fail from a business perspective, we will see. Don't worry the site will be up because some friends and I need it daily.:) I absolutely want the application to be a usable (non-crippled) tool for free users, also one will be able to increase their free limit even further by inviting friends. <salespitch>I want FaW to show people that flashcards aren't just crutches for cramming things anymore, computer assisted flashcards is by far the best lifelong learning method.</salespitch> I hope when people see that they will reach the free limit pretty fast. I plan adding some features to paying customers only, like images inside flashcards, but free users will always have every feature that is crucial for learning.
Thank you for trying out the site, I appreciate it!
You're absolutely right, the inner pages need a serious redesign, the current one really is the first iteration ("thank god it works" state). OTOH I consider the landing page to be "final-ish" (except the logo / footer), do you think that is ok?
I use random shakes (jQuery rumble) at two places, the big "Sign up" button on the landing page, I think this is ok to grab the attention. The other shake effect is on the dashboard, the tutorial uses shakes to guide the user to the right actions to take, but these shakes will go away once the user did what the tutorial asked. Do you think both of these (landing page/tutorial) have to go? Maybe the tutorial could use some other effect, or I could make the UI simpler, so there is no need for such effects.
I will do the redesign in the next 2-3 days, your feedback was very well received, thank you.