Top Flashcard Priorities?

[mikelove]

While roughly 75% of the effort for our Next Big Update has gone into dictionary stuff (the new search engine is indeed pretty darn cool) and general UI, we've been trying to make sure that there's at least one significant enhancement for every paid module too - PDF support for OCR, EPUB support (we think - just got that up and running today but it's looking pretty solid so far) for the document reader, expanded character set plus improved accuracy for handwriting, better component drill-downs for stroke order, synthetic text-to-speech example sentences for audio (have to charge for that but you'll get a generous discount), etc. But we have a few days in our schedule this month for flashcard enhancements that we're not quite sure what to do with. (we're actually finding ourselves with extra time now thanks to slow deliveries of a couple of high-priority dictionaries)

I think there's enough time for one, or maybe two, of the items on this list:

• Preliminary iCloud support (no conflict resolution, but your modified flashcards on one device will automatically go over to the other as long as you're not working on both at the same time)
• Timed auto-advance (review cards without tapping any buttons, with the option to have it read English to you too)
• Streamlined SRS (better statistics, everything in terms of intervals instead of all of this "score" business)
• Custom fields (extra items you can add / display, possibly including embedded images and audio)
• Automated list import (screen with a catalog of Pleco- and user-created, tap one button to download + import)
• Live rich text editing (would work for user dictionary entries too)
• Enhanced search (full-text option, plus you can scroll up to the top of an Organize Cards list and type in any combination of pinyin / characters / etc, with HWR available via a button)

We've already done a number of other minor much-requested things (unlimited length for definitions in imports, easy switching of dictionaries when viewing a full card, icon to indicate if flashcard already exists, access to existing card's Card Info from duplicate alert, easy access to list of recently added flashcards from the dictionary screen, add set # of new cards "per day" instead of having a maximum pool size) but I think these are the most popular remaining requests. Any of them that we don't cover in this release would almost certainly be in the next one, which is generally more flashcard- and reader- centric. The SRS / custom field enhancements have the added benefit of being pretty much all in cross-platform code, so they would quickly benefit Android users too, whereas the others are mostly in UI or other platform-specific code and might not show up on Android for a while.

So: does any one of these strike you as a higher priority item than the others? Or is there another similar-sized improvement you'd like to see instead?

(Skritter-sync-related enhancements are on a different timetable though we have a couple of those in the pipeline too)

 

[skripp]

Streamlined SRS.

 

[Alexis]

I think it may be a good idea to streamline the experience for new users. It's probably the most complicated module right now in Pleco in terms of interface. Perhaps by one of more of the following:

- Making downloadable/shareable flashcard setups (ie. a config file that can be saved/loaded/uploaded/downloaded).
- A Flashcard Wizard that to prompt the user through setup
- A "basic/advanced" toggle to show/hide flashcard options (80/20 rule. 80% of the users will only want to see 20% of the options).

I'm really looking forward to the new Pleco release!

 

[Eddy]

Glad to hear that you have some extra time to work on Flashcard module features for the upcoming update.

By far the greatest priority for my study method would be the addition of Custom fields. I use mnemonics (combination of Heisig & Richards and Matthews & Matthews approach) for my character and vocab studies. I know that a lot of fellow students do so too. At the moment I log all my mnemonics in an excel sheet to which I refer in case I forget a character or word. It's quite a cumbersome way of working though and it slows down my flashcard review pace. Having immediate access to the mnemonics through a Custom field will significantly speed up my reviews and also strengthen the learning effects in my view (the shorter the feedback loop between the error and relearning the right answer the better).

The other features sound great as well, especially more clear statistics and full iCloud sync, but I am fine waiting for those when the flashcard update comes after the next big update.

Keep up the good work,
cheers

 

[character]

I think it may be a good idea to streamline the experience for new users. It's probably the most complicated module right now in Pleco in terms of interface. Perhaps by one of more of the following:

- Making downloadable/shareable flashcard setups (ie. a config file that can be saved/loaded/uploaded/downloaded).
- A Flashcard Wizard that to prompt the user through setup
- A "basic/advanced" toggle to show/hide flashcard options (80/20 rule. 80% of the users will only want to see 20% of the options).

I agree. If your UI redesign didn't make it much easier for new users to work with flashcards, please spend your cycles on it. For example, currently there's no way to change the default flashcard category in the Flashcards section; one has to go to the Settings section.

Perhaps as a user looks up words in the dictionary they are automatically added to a special flashcard category. Perhaps have a few categories (100 most frequent words, etc.) which ship with Pleco so the user doesn't have to do anything to start using flashcards.

OTOH, if you have settled on a new UI, perhaps now is the time to make instructional videos.

Of the items you listed, I think these would be good:
"[*]Automated list import (screen with a catalog of Pleco- and user-created, tap one button to download + import)"
I'd suggest just curated lists, which show off your PLC dictionary entries.

"[*]Timed auto-advance (review cards without tapping any buttons, with the option to have it read English to you too)"

"[*]Streamlined SRS (better statistics, everything in terms of intervals instead of all of this "score" business)"
A good idea, but rushing something like this could result in math mistakes.

---

"[*]Preliminary iCloud support (no conflict resolution, but your modified flashcards on one device will automatically go over to the other as long as you're not working on both at the same time)"
I'd suggest waiting until you and Apple can get it to the 'just works' level.

 

[wibr]

1st custom fields
2nd streamlined srs

not only because those would also be available on android ;-)

 

[alanmd]

1st- iCloud support- keeping Pleco's flash cards in sync across my iPad and iPhone would be great.
2nd- Custom fields

 

[mikelove]

- Making downloadable/shareable flashcard setups (ie. a config file that can be saved/loaded/uploaded/downloaded).

That one worries me because of the possibility of adding an "expert mode" - don't want settings changing on people who can't see where they changed. It also furthers the misconception that the flashcard system has to be heavily customized and won't just "work" out of the box - the goal here should be to reassure people that they really don't need to wade through 20 pages of documentation in order to start using flashcards intelligently.

- A Flashcard Wizard that to prompt the user through setup

Same problem, though this could be a useful trick if we just want them to decide one or two things like whether or not to enable SRS.

- A "basic/advanced" toggle to show/hide flashcard options (80/20 rule. 80% of the users will only want to see 20% of the options).

That one makes a lot of sense, though I'm not sure if it makes more sense to do it with a toggle or simply with separate advanced settings screens; link all of the advanced options from an "Advanced" button at the bottom of Flashcard Testing, say. That way we can more easily direct users to a particular advanced option they might find useful.

By far the greatest priority for my study method would be the addition of Custom fields. I use mnemonics (combination of Heisig & Richards and Matthews & Matthews approach) for my character and vocab studies. I know that a lot of fellow students do so too. At the moment I log all my mnemonics in an excel sheet to which I refer in case I forget a character or word. It's quite a cumbersome way of working though and it slows down my flashcard review pace. Having immediate access to the mnemonics through a Custom field will significantly speed up my reviews and also strengthen the learning effects in my view (the shorter the feedback loop between the error and relearning the right answer the better).

Thanks - also makes sense in the context of what we're talking about with Skritter, so there's a lot to recommend it.

I agree. If your UI redesign didn't make it much easier for new users to work with flashcards, please spend your cycles on it. For example, currently there's no way to change the default flashcard category in the Flashcards section; one has to go to the Settings section.

That actually changes whenever you tap-hold on the + button (unless you've turned off the option for sticky category selection); in fact we've gone back and forth about whether we should even keep the Settings option. In general the idea we're working towards there is to put non-test-specific flashcard settings in Settings and everything else in Flashcard Testing, though perhaps we should link to the flashcard settings from the Flashcards tab somewhere.

Perhaps as a user looks up words in the dictionary they are automatically added to a special flashcard category. Perhaps have a few categories (100 most frequent words, etc.) which ship with Pleco so the user doesn't have to do anything to start using flashcards.

Default categories are what we were thinking with that one-button list download feature - give people a choice when they first launch flashcards (or when they try to start a session with an empty deck). Adding words automatically when looked up could get kind of expensive space-wise - the solution we've adopted on Android is to keep a longer list of history and offer a command on that screen to dump all of the words in history to flashcards; would that help matters?

OTOH, if you have settled on a new UI, perhaps now is the time to make instructional videos.

Instructional videos are strictly a post-release thing, we can't justify taking time to make them when people are still waiting on the new release. (also the reason our website redesign has been on ice for so long in spite of the fact that the code / files are all ready to go)

"[*]Streamlined SRS (better statistics, everything in terms of intervals instead of all of this "score" business)"
A good idea, but rushing something like this could result in math mistakes.

Actually this is strictly a design thing - we'd use the same underlying code, we'd just stop expressing things in terms of "scores" and use intervals instead, and add some better ways of getting at / analyzing that interval behavior.

"[*]Preliminary iCloud support (no conflict resolution, but your modified flashcards on one device will automatically go over to the other as long as you're not working on both at the same time)"
I'd suggest waiting until you and Apple can get it to the 'just works' level.

With documents rather than Core Data I think they're already pretty close, though we might nonetheless want to make iOS 6 a minimum requirement for iCloud sync.

Thanks for the feedback, all!

 

[Alexis]

[*]Timed auto-advance (review cards without tapping any buttons, with the option to have it read English to you too)

I'd love to have this one to for learning vocab. I'd consider a (user-adjustable?) space between "Question/Answer" voices a must-have for this feature. It will give the user time to recall and say the word before hearing the 'answer'. Perhaps make the space proportional to the number of characters (ie. the more characters, the longer the space is left), to give time for the user to say the words/character/sentence, etc.

How would you choose what part of the definition to read out for the English part?

 

[character]

That actually changes whenever you tap-hold on the + button[...]

I find that problematic because it's a mode which overloads an important common function with what is for me a rare important function. Using it would cause me a lot of adding the first word of a new category to the old category then remembering I needed to switch categories instead. Having the switch default categories functionality where categories are otherwise manipulated makes a lot more sense to me. Being the default is part of a category's state, just like which cards it has.

Maybe we're thinking about categories differently. I think about them in terms of students creating vocabulary lists for chapters/books, so there's not a lot of switching categories on the fly. From chinese-forums I get the impression advanced learners tend to dump everything into one category and let SRS keep the review size manageable. I'm sure there are people who create many categories and switch between them on the fly, so I'm not saying remove the tap-hold.

I admit not being able to set the default category in the categories screens is one of my biggest annoyances with Pleco, so sorry if this went on too long/felt like a rant/etc. If you could add a "Make default category" checkbox to the create new category screen, that would remove 95% of the pain the current design causes me.

Adding words automatically when looked up could get kind of expensive space-wise - the solution we've adopted on Android is to keep a longer list of history and offer a command on that screen to dump all of the words in history to flashcards; would that help matters?

That sounds like a great feature, but to help new users (who will probably go to Flashcards before finding history) there would need to a way to generate the flashcards from history in Flashcards as well.

 

[Vzzzbx]

iCloud, with enhanced search a close second. The current search is clunky but it does the job; iCloud support would mean not having to do a weekly backup/restore of my entire iPhone flashcard database to my iPad. Cheers.

 

[mikelove]

I'd love to have this one to for learning vocab. I'd consider a (user-adjustable?) space between "Question/Answer" voices a must-have for this feature. It will give the user time to recall and say the word before hearing the 'answer'. Perhaps make the space proportional to the number of characters (ie. the more characters, the longer the space is left), to give time for the user to say the words/character/sentence, etc.

Yes, that part is indeed essential - I've spent enough time with Pimsleur tapes to appreciate the value of good pause

How would you choose what part of the definition to read out for the English part?

The definitions are generally rather short, actually, but maybe still a bit too long for this; I think this might be a job for custom fields, let users customize the English (or even record their own English audio?).

Intelligent repetition spacing would also help, so this may turn out to be too large a feature for this update if we want to do it well; however, there's no reason we couldn't do a basic version now and then build on it later, it's not a feature that will feel half-hearted and disappointing if the initial implementation just gives you a checkbox and a slider for the delay.

I find that problematic because it's a mode which overloads an important common function with what is for me a rare important function. Using it would cause me a lot of adding the first word of a new category to the old category then remembering I needed to switch categories instead. Having the switch default categories functionality where categories are otherwise manipulated makes a lot more sense to me. Being the default is part of a category's state, just like which cards it has.

A lot of people do seem to view it as a common function, that's why we have a (user-requested, of course) option to have it always show the menu even when you only tap on it. Among all of the lists we've seen I'd say it's about 50:50 between imported / textbook-based vocabulary and vocabulary that's been deliberately sorted by groups.

I admit not being able to set the default category in the categories screens is one of my biggest annoyances with Pleco, so sorry if this went on too long/felt like a rant/etc. If you could add a "Make default category" checkbox to the create new category screen, that would remove 95% of the pain the current design causes me.

How about a button in the screen where you rename / split a category to make it the new default?

That sounds like a great feature, but to help new users (who will probably go to Flashcards before finding history) there would need to a way to generate the flashcards from history in Flashcards as well.

That's liable to confuse people who find it there first - if you see this out-of-context in the "Flashcards" section you're not necessarily going to understand that it's related to the dictionary and not the flashcard part of Pleco.

iCloud, with enhanced search a close second. The current search is clunky but it does the job; iCloud support would mean not having to do a weekly backup/restore of my entire iPhone flashcard database to my iPad. Cheers.

Definitely a benefit, yes.

 

[character]

How about a button in the screen where you rename / split a category to make it the new default?

That would be great!

That's liable to confuse people who find it there first - if you see this out-of-context in the "Flashcards" section you're not necessarily going to understand that it's related to the dictionary and not the flashcard part of Pleco.

You're not shy about using explanatory text in Pleco. If it's not in Flashcards I'm not sure how helpful it would be to beginners.

 

[mikelove]

You're not shy about using explanatory text in Pleco. If it's not in Flashcards I'm not sure how helpful it would be to beginners.

If they're not aware of the existence of the history feature yet, then when they encounter it in the Flashcards tab for the first time it won't be clear what it's for; if they are aware of it then they'll presumably have seen the "dump to flashcard list" button at the bottom of the screen too. People normally go to the dictionary to add flashcards, so if anything that's a more reasonable / expected place to create them from history.

 

[character]

Looking forward to the set default category change in the next update. :wink:

If they're not aware of the existence of the history feature yet, then when they encounter it in the Flashcards tab for the first time it won't be clear what it's for [...]

You can have a modal dialog come up the first time someone enters Flashcards and ask if the user would like words they've searched on to be saved to special flashcard category.

 

[mikelove]

You can have a modal dialog come up the first time someone enters Flashcards and ask if the user would like words they've searched on to be saved to special flashcard category.

Actually we wouldn't be doing that automatically - there'd be too much of a performance impact, both with every new word added and with flashcards in general if you ended up with 50,000 cards in your deck because you'd left this feature turned on for too long. You'd have to manually go into the history screen and dump your recent words to flashcards.

 

[character]

Actually we wouldn't be doing that automatically - there'd be too much of a performance impact, both with every new word added and with flashcards in general if you ended up with 50,000 cards in your deck because you'd left this feature turned on for too long. You'd have to manually go into the history screen and dump your recent words to flashcards.

You could limit it to last 500-1,000 words and use a queue to update it in the background.

Personally I'm not convinced this feature in general would be better than some predefined categories for new users. I just don't see it as impossible to add.

 

[mikelove]

Personally I'm not convinced this feature in general would be better than some predefined categories for new users. I just don't see it as impossible to add.

Oh we're planning that as well - either build them into the app or make them a one-button download if we're worried about licensing (a lot of the good lists have licensing terms that make them a bit iffy to include, though it's not too difficult to build our own lists for the HSK / TOP / etc).

 

[GregBeijing]

Mike,

i have been using the Pleco for many years now, and have longed for the day when the Auto-advance function would come online for Flashcards! Thank you for putting it on this list, and considering it.

#1 Timed auto-advance (review cards without tapping any buttons, with the option to have it read English to you too)
#2 Custom fields (extra items you can add / display, possibly including embedded images and audio)

thanks!

Greg

 

[eddymatthew]

definitely a more streamlined and automated SRS, based more on an interval learning.