The pitch for ScrollWise sounds terrible: 'It's like TikTok, but educational.' I know. Every time I described it that way, people's eyes glazed over. But hear me out — the format genuinely works for certain types of learning.
The insight is that some knowledge is best absorbed in small, disconnected chunks. You don't need a 30-minute lecture to learn what a mental model is, or how compound interest works, or why the sky is blue. You need a well-written card that takes 30 seconds to read.
I built it in Flutter because the scroll physics matter a lot for this kind of app. It needed to feel snappy and natural — that satisfying snap to each card as you swipe. I spent an embarrassing amount of time tweaking the scroll behavior to feel right.
Content caching was important. I use Hive for local storage so cards load instantly even on bad connections. Supabase handles the backend content store. I also built a separate admin dashboard in React (scrollwise-admin) for curating and managing content cards.
The hard part isn't the tech — it's the content. Making educational content that's both accurate and genuinely engaging in under 100 words is a writing challenge, not an engineering one. I went through several iterations on card format before landing on something that worked: a hook question, a concise explanation, and a 'so what' takeaway.
Does it work? Better than I expected, honestly. People browse it longer than traditional learning apps because there's no commitment — you can stop after one card or scroll for 20 minutes. The low stakes make it easier to start, and the short format makes it easier to stay.