I'm wondering if there are actually that many people who find Anki difficult to use, or if it's mostly just a dogma that people repeat because other people told them.

Like, thinking of your own subjective experience, do you actually experience Anki as difficult to use or complicated? As a software, Anki is by far one of the simplest programs I've ever used.

Even something like Word or Powerpoint blows Anki out of the water in terms of complexity and features. I actually counted it, just the "insert" tab in the Word ribbon has more options than the entire "deck settings" screen in Anki. And Word has 10 of these tabs in the Ribbon, and a lot of these options actually open new screens with more options.

Yet no one would claim Word isn't getting enough users because it's too difficult.

The only remotely complex thing in Anki is creating new card types. Now putting aside that most people won't ever need to create new card types as the default cards really suffice for most use cases and you can also just get card types from other people... creating card types is still quite easy? You need like the most basic knowledge of HTML. Compared to Word macros (Visual Basic) or Excel formulas (💀), Anki cards are like 100x easier.

The most difficult feature in Anki would barely qualify as some mid-level intermediate thing in Excel. I've had more trouble making Word templates than Anki cards.

Why Anki is actually seen as difficult

I think the main reason Anki is seen as difficult, is because making good cards is difficult. However, that is not the fault of the software. That's like blaming Word because you install it and have trouble writing like Hemingway. There is literally nothing the Anki devs can do to make that easier.

On top of that, learning stuff is just mentally difficult. However, people only recognize that when they use Anki, they are intelectually challenged, and so they misattribute the blame on Anki as a software, instead of the material they put into it.

That's like opening Ulysses on an e-reader and then blaming the software when you don't understand it.

I think Anki, as it is right now, is already close to the most intuitive and easy-to-use it can be without taking away important functions.

The only thing I would try to change would be the "note types" screen, instead of having a little box just actually have like a screen where you can see previews of the card types as you scroll through them, but beyond that there's not much space to improve. And maybe add some easy elements to the card type editor, like having a bold button that just inserts a <b> wherever your cursor is.

On top of that, maybe have some "official" decks I guess? That would be the main thing to make getting into it easier, get someone to make a deck of the 1000 most important words in every major language. I'm sure people would be willing to do that for free. I mean, I'd do it for my native language (Dutch) if asked. Having a standardized "beginner" deck template that shows off the different features (card types, cloze, basic, type-in, sub-decks etc.) and making one for each language could help.

But to go back to the topic, I think Anki is already at a level where difficulty of usage is no longer a barrier. Yeah your grandma is not gonna use Anki, but it's already well below other popular softwares in difficulty.

I don't think Anki needs a blue owl that shows up when you open it for the first time saying: "Hey there! Today I will show you how to make a card. Click the 'create card' button!"

At best Anki could maybe have some default decks/card types to help people get into it.