Visual Book: A New Direction

Until now Visual Book has been trying to do two things at once. On one hand it was going to help users learn through visualisation and on the other it was going to be a presentation tool. So what is the problem ? Why can’t it be both ?

Because it doesn’t fulfil either objectives very well. By trying to be both a learning tool and a presentation tool, it fails at both.

1. Learning is not a passive process. Simply scrolling through a presentation, even if visual, does not lead to sufficient learning. Learning requires active participation from the user. Kids do need to use pen and paper to write down an equation and work out a problem by hand. But none of this is possible in a presentation.
2. On the other hand, as a presentation tool it doesn’t deliver exactly what people want. After years of presentations in PowerPoint, people have a very specific expectation from a presentation tool. People expect infographics, beautiful design and maybe some images. Visual book however was not built for design or infographics. And while the visuals are really nice, the verbose text on every slide often threw people off.
3. On top of this LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT have gotten really good at directly creating presentations that there is little need for Visual Book to do the same thing

I never actually wanted to build a presentation tool. But the format I first created was very similar to one and a lot of people understood what the word ‘presentation’ meant as opposed me having to explain what a “Visual Book” is. So it was easy to tell people that this is a ‘presentation app’ and that did get us our first consistent set of users. But ultimately it came at the expense of the real objective of Visual Book.

Considering these factors, I have decided Visual book will squarely focus on learning and will no longer be a presentation tool.

Visual book will continue to focus on its core philosophy, learning through visualisation.

Visual Book = Visual Worksheet

The format will still feature a combination of image and text but the implementation beyond that will change a lot.

Interactivity:

1. It will quiz you every few slides to check your knowledge and understanding. You will also be asked to work out things using pen and paper and upload a snapshot
2. You can ask questions when you don’t understand something

Adaptability: Every child is going to have different questions and starts with different abilities and experience. The worksheet should be able to dynamically adapt to the needs of a specific child while also meeting the broader learning objectives

Tracking:

1. You will be able to track your learning progress and continue where you left off
2. The tracking here will be more than just how many lessons you have covered, we will put your learning in the context of everybody else on the platform but without adding any competitive pressure

Offline: Parents across the world and even adults are concerned about their screen time and justifiably so. To deal with this Visual Book will enable you to just print your visual book in an A4 paper, work on it offline and then upload it back for evaluation. So parents and teachers can print out a range of worksheets and have their kids work on it offline with their support.

The Largest Visual Library

We will create an extensive library of Visual Books curated by age, domain and expertise so users can get started with their learning right away.

When you land on the website you should be able to find a topic of interest and if not we will dynamically create a worksheet for you. This will also become our process for creating the library itself. We respond dynamically to user demand instead of us deciding what they should be learning.

What users will be able to do:

1. Browse a range of topics and learning pathways in STEM subjects.
2. Teachers will be able to create custom visual books for their class
3. Users will be able to track their personal learning without it becoming a competition with everyone else

How is this different from any other ed-tech company ? Say like Khan academy

Two words: Visualisation and Scale.

1. Visualisations are still at the heart of Visual Book: The current engineering behind Visual Book already allows us to generate highly accurate images at scale. The worksheets will feature images heavily allowing children and adults to imagine and learn that much better.
2. Knowledge at scale: Leveraging AI we can digest a massive volume of knowledge and create visual books at scale not possible until now. By building the platform with AI at the foundations, we can build a platform that is built for scale

The Market

Students and Adult Learners.

The student market is an obvious one and our initial focus will be on this market. However there is an increased focus on adult learning, especially in the age of AI where knowledge is being created incredibly fast. The execution for these two markets might have to be different but the goal should be to serve both in the long run.

I am very happy with this pivot because it finally feels like we focussing on one thing while staying true to our mission. Its a brand new day :)