It’s an Oculus Quest app and it’s free. So if you have the hardware, feel free to download it and try it out. (There’s an optional donation, but you can skip it.) – [https://playingwcolor.itch.io/vr-kanji-cards](https://playingwcolor.itch.io/vr-kanji-cards)
This app is trying to take advantage of a strategy for memory enhancement called The Method of loci​, but without having to use your imagination to create the environment yourself. You can learn more about the Method of loci​ here – [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method\_of\_loci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci).
Personally, my spatial memory is a lot better than other parts of my memory, so I’ve been wanting do something like this for a while. I’m a VR developer, and one day it dawned on me that I could make an app that automates a lot of the effort of creating flash cards, plus this can be easily shared with other people. So, I hope others find it useful.
You pick up cards from a pedestal, and place them around the environment, which is a simple square room with a bunch of tables.
I’d like to add more interesting environments in the future, but for now I’m not planning on working on this project further. If it gets a lot of good feedback, I’ll come back, add more to it, and work on smoothing out the kinks.
2 comments
Saving for whenever I get VR!
I think it’s a fun idea. I can see myself remembering ‘this is the kanji I keep over there’, although as you approach 2,200, the room could be a real mess.
The content on the back of each card needs to be thought through, though. It has never been the most efficient way to cram *all* the information about a given kanji into your head at once, which is why methods aiming for efficiency such as Remembering the Kanji and WaniKani will start by only teaching you the bare minimum (a name and appearance) that you can associate the rest of the information with later. This is a good start, but to really be an effective study tool, you need to think about how someone can use it routinely, what they should do each time they open it, and what kind of results they should expect.