Are specific examples of this useful? I paid some attention today, and I several times got two different questions for the same word within 5 minutes of each other. Examples:
太極拳: pinyin asked for, then 5 minutes later (2:44pm today PDT) tone was asked for
機會: definition asked for, then 5 minutes later (2:48pm) pinyin was asked for
營養: definition asked for, then 5 minutes later (2:49pm) pinyin asked for
飽: pinyin asked for, then writing 20 mins later, then tone 5 minutes later (3:53pm)
In these cases, these were not new vocabulary. Also, there were several instances where the cards were about 1 hour apart.
My concern here is that 5 minutes is not enough time to forget the answer seen on the card before.
I can now reproduce the frozen drawing area. I have auto-advance on (in fact, all of the quick setting filters are on). On a multi-character tone card (as an example), after writing the first tone, double-tap the grade right before it will transition to the next card. I can reproduce it about 50% of the time doing this.
Should be easy to repro with a bunch of long words set to review tones. Note that the double-tap doesn’t have to be fast, I believe it just has to be taps or multiple taps right around the card transition time.
Thanks! I found it today doing almost exactly what you described as well. Josh is able to reproduce and we’ll work on a fix for 3.0.8 update. Not going to make it in the next Apple approved build, but we’ll get it taken care of.
Appreciate you putting in the time to help track it down!
Ok, now for the remainder of my bug/feature request/feedback list. This is roughly in my personal priority order, most important to fix first. I upgraded to v3.0.6, but my other details are the same as above.
Fixed! Thank you for making the study button bigger! It was hard to reach at the top right corner.
Hidden pinyin and definition are no longer revealed after you answer a question (I have both hidden). This sounds minor, but I used them for review, e.g. to review the definition after answering the pinyin. I always study all of the parts briefly once I answer a question, so I miss this quite a bit.
Sounds: when writing a word, it no longer says the character after each character is completed. Same for tones. This was very helpful for reinforcing the correct pronunciation, particularly when studying the tones.
Info screen: you can no longer tap into individual characters on the info screen to drill down. This was super useful, particularly to display the stats about that character (whether it is new or not, how many times you have written it, etc). It also doesn’t show the definitions of each character, but if I were able to drill down, I could probably live with that.
The coloring of writing after grading is inconsistent: not after the computer initially assigns a grade, the squigs and character stay gray, but if you tap on a grade to change it, the raw squigs get colored. The (non-raw) character is only colored if you go back. But then the squigs are not colored. I would expect the squigs or character to change to the grade color each time you complete a character and change again each time you change the grade.
Related, how the drawing area looks when you go back is not consistent. If I go back from one word to a previous word, it shows me a gray character with my raw squigs on top. If I go back between characters in a word, it shows me a colored character (depending on the score) with no raw squigs. Then going forward again clears the squigs and shows the colored character.
Related, I find the indicator for which grade I got after writing is too subtle. If the character is colored when grading, this will be solved.
The characters displayed at the top of the screen are also no longer colored after they are written. Previously you could see which characters you got right without having to go back and check. If writing a word of many characters, this is particularly useful, but also good for verifying auto-advance didn’t leave a grading mistake.
Sounds: missing sounds for the major actions, like answering a question or when adding a word completes. The biggest one I miss is the celebration sound when the queue gets to zero.
Going to the main screen and back to Study often changes the word I was working on. This is disconcerting and often I lose the word I was working on. Steps to reproduce: go into Study. Start studying a word by e.g. writing the first character. Go back to the main screen. Hit study again. Observe: a new word often (but not always) has replaced the one you were just working on. If the same word is there, the characters you wrote are gone.
Sometimes writing the third stroke of 氵 (i.e. 三點水旁, the left half of 沒), it clears the screen. I know that in this case I am writing it a little too vertically, but even though that is my mistake, it is still frustrating. It seems that even the smallest upward stroke that is more than ~45 degrees will trigger a clear of the screen. Maybe make the stroke need to longer or more vertical?
Tap and hold to show the character: I thought this was a good idea until I started having the character inadvertently shown because I pause briefly while stating to write a stroke with my finger on the screen. I pause because I am considering my stroke. This has happened several times in the last few days and invalidates the question since I was given the answer. Not sure how to solve this other than changing the gesture. Suggestion: change reveal to a two-finger tap. Thus the taps would be: one finger tap to show one stroke, two finger tap to show all strokes, and two finger hold to enter teaching mode.
It takes awhile for the app to update the main due count when changed outside of the app, and there is no visual indication that it is out of date. Moreover, when the visual indication that the app is syncing completes, it is still out of date. Steps to report: note the due count, leave the app, and go into the app store version of the app. Note that the due counts are similar but not the same (this is not the bug). Study 10 items, then switch back to the beta app. Wait for the main due count to update. Observe: the main due count takes more than a minute to update, despite the blue progress line at the top refreshing once in awhile. Note that the website updated right away (after refresh).
The playback sound quality is bad in some cases. There is often background noise and/or distortions during playback. One word that does this for me 休息. If you play multiple times, one version has background noise and the other has distortions.
Bold and italics in mnemonics are not yet supported. I use these all the time.
Sometimes the writing area clears when I go back, requiring me to rewrite the character I’ve already written. The steps to reproduce this are: find a two-character word, write the first character, start writing the second character, swipe up to clear the second character. Now if at any time you go back to the first character, you will find it also has been cleared.
Card transitions: The transition between cards during Study, after answering a question, is often very subtle. Sound would help here but also some type of subtle animation to indicate that you are moving to the next card.
Menu transition animations: Going back from settings or other items in the menu bar doesn’t land you back in the menu where you’d expect. Instead it puts you back in the main screen. This would be fine but there is no menu close animation to tell you that that happened, so it is jarring to have the menu gone.
Lists: tapping into the lists on the main page, they list the % complete, which I love. I’d like to see this on the front page. However, there is a bug that shows my completed lists as 99% complete. E.g. my HSK 1 list on my account.
Lists: while we are discussing lists, I’d really really really like to see the % complete for each section, and then whether each item has been added or not when you drill down to the actual characters.
I am not getting warnings about backwards lines or missing hooks. It seems to not allow backward strokes (fine with me) but it does allow missing hooks with no warning now. I found the warnings very useful, as leaving off the hook is incorrect.
Time Studied on the main screen does not update immediately when you come back from Studying (but the due count does).
Swipe gestures: The feel of the right and left swipe-from-edge gestures (to open the menu and the info page) are very non-native feeling and janky. I know this isn’t a short term priority, but they feel really broken right now. They don’t even appear until you lift your finger. Compare to Mail or Pleco or any other iOS app that has native swipe-from-edge UI. They should look and behave exactly like normal iOS swipes.
The drawing of the individual panes when you drill down in Settings stutters significantly on an iPhone X. Steps to report: go to Settings, tap Username. Observe: low frame rate as the panel slides in. Repeating this immediately gives a smoother animation. Repeating it with another setting shows stuttering again.
In raw squigs, if I write half a character and go back and then forward, the raw squids are replaced by non-raw strokes. To reproduce: fine a two character writing question, write the first character, write the first few strokes of the second character, then go back to the first. Finally grade the first again. Observe: the second character is shown but your raw squigs are replaced by non-raw.
Sometimes swiping up to erase reveals the first stroke of the character to write. To reproduce, go to a writing card, and swipe up several times. Once in awhile, it shows the first stroke.
There is no longer a way to set the grade for a whole word, just the individual characters. Is this information no longer used? It was possible in the previous iOS app.
**Design Feedback **
As someone else mentioned, on the study cards , I’d like to see the Chinese characters displayed larger. They can dynamically shrink if there are lots of them, but by default, I like the size of the old iOS app for ease of reading. I guess I’m gettin’ old.
Characters on tone cards too small: when the tone question is asked, I prefer that the characters are the main focus, not the pinyin as it is in the beta. It is better practice to read the characters than the pinyin, and when you have pinyin and definition hidden, you can’t tell what tone to use without reading the tiny characters below the hidden pinyin. You need more than just the one character in the writing area because of tone changes.
The app looks like an Android app in some areas. On iOS, this feels really awkward, especially the menu and settings screens. What percentage of your paying customers are iOS vs Android? If it is less than 20% iOS, I could imagine this making sense, but that seems unlikely. The study screen and main screen are so custom that they are less of a problem, so at worst case I’d shoot for that.
The strokes using raw squigs look nice, but they look a little low res (some jaggies) and they change once you finish writing (still jaggy, but somewhat smoothed?). It is close and some work could make them really look good.
General design polish like Proxi mentioned will really help the app look great for the full release
I agree with Jake who said that the gray font-based character that is overlaid on top of the raw strokes that the user makes should be more subtle or otherwise less dominating on top of the user’s strokes.
Nit: Could we change “raw squibs” or whatever the menu item is to “raw strokes” or “user strokes”? No one knows what a squib is. I think a lot more people would use their own strokes if they knew it was supported.
Nit: The black (dark gray) of the top of the app and the black of the status bar don’t match, for iPhone X. On iOS they should. Pick one or the other. Overcast is an iPhone app that has three themes including dark gray and black, if you want to see what the two options would look like.
Nit: “Definition” is shown in red while “Pinyin” is shown in blue. The blue looks great but the red looks like there is an error. How about green for Definition?
Feature Requests
Stats I use the Stats website page every day. Here’s what I’d need at a minimum: all-time total #items, characters, and words learned. Lower priority: In addition, I’d love to see my streak (and please make it not reset each month!) and the current calendar as on the website (please make it start on Sunday if my locale is set to the US!). The others are nice to have for me, but I love interactive charts, etc.
Lists: It was mentioned that the lists in the main view will be sorted differently in the future. The sorting on the website works best for me, with sections for Adding and Reviewing.
Words: I could really use search in my list of Words. My main use case is checking if a word is already in my study list.
Words: I’d like to see Words sorted (or sortable) by last seen, like on the website.
Add: I know this sounds weird, but since I am adding an arbitrary number of words each day (to meet my items goal), my ideal set of + options would be “1,2,3,4,5,10,20”. Currently it is “1,5,10,20”. The former would allow me to add whatever I need in three taps or less.
I don’t really know what to say about the above, other than thank you! This type of feedback is really, really appreciated. I don’t know how much time this took you to write, but we’ll be using a lot of it as a roadmap for continued improvements, especially for iOS devices. Josh actually just got his hands on iPhone X and 2018 iPad for testing and development builds, which will help things along immensely.
Without going line by line through the list (at least for now), I’ll just say that most, if not all, of your points, are valid and we are either already working on them, or they’ll be seriously considered.
At the moment, Josh and I are the two primary team members working on the Skritter Mobile app, so some things might take some time. Michael and a lot of the other team members have been working hard on other projects, but they’ll be diversifying time and energy to help us continue to roll out updates.
Regarding design feedback-- thank you for all the suggestions! I’m currently taking point on the design of the app, and kinda learning as I go. I have a more detailed reply about that here, which goes into our team’s current design situation and future plans.
I’ll be commenting on some of the specifics later, but I just wanted to take the time to say thanks for posting this up! Have a great weekend and stay tuned for more updates. 3.0.7 was sent to Apple yesterday and once it is approved for release we’ll send it out on TestFlight and get to work on 3.0.8
Generalities
My config: iPhone 8 Plus (MQ8G2ZP/A) - iOS 11.4 (15F79)
Location: China, Shanghai
Tested with and without VPN
It is a very good beta here. Much better than all of the previous. Thank you for the amazing work. Can’t wait to see this beta growing. And I am generally enthusiast to see the path Skritter is taking with all the Youtube Videos with all the explanations and other.
However, I think there is a long way to go to match the quality of the original app but it’s on the good way.
English is not my native language so please forgive the general writting quality of the following.
Finally, I know some of the issue addressed below received a reply on other people but this was written before I took a look at the forum.
Lack of friendly sounds
The sound is missing ! All I can hear is the pronunciation of the words. I feel pretty lonely when I use Skritter. The app seems much less friendly.
I think it is necessary to add:
“Woosh” sounds of the brush when writing on the canvas
“Easy” “Correct” “So-So” “Forgot” grade sounds
“5min” “15min” etc… encouragement sounds
and in general UI sounds when clicking on a button etc…
Lack of pronunciation breakdown.
On the old app, when I was studying the writing of “很好”, once I finished writing 很 the app would pronounce only 很, then when I finished writting 好 the app would pronounce only 好, and after, the app would pronounce 很好.
Now the beta app, only pronunce 很好 without the pronunciation breakdown of each hanzi.
Sound is delayed
The pronunciation of the hanzi comes to late. Sometime the pronunciation is coming to late and the app has already moved to the next study card. So for example if I have to study the writing of “很好” once I input the final stoke the auto-advance starts and last for 1.5 sec and after moving to the next card, the problem is that the pronunciation seems to be set to 2 sec. So the pronunciation for “很好” comes after the study card and is pronounced on the next word study card witch is confusing.
Android app look and feel
It is very strange to have the look and feel of an Android app on the iPhone.
I think you should use more “iOS visual elements” in your app.
Input the stokes and setting difficulty
I really like the new input of the stokes.
However, I think you should add a setting to change the “forgiveness” of the stoke recognition. Sometimes, I don’t really remember how a hanzi is written and if you try to write a little bit randomly, most of the time, the input is accepted.
It can be useful when you are learning but as I really want to know how to write, I would like the stoke recognition difficulty to be customisable. Maybe in the same way as it is possible to set the retention rate.
Size of the font
Is it me or the font used is very very small ?
Especially on iPhone Plus screens, there is soooo much space waste.
And this space waste is emphasized by the color choice (mainly white + flat design) and the lack of sound which result in a feeling of emptiness.
SRS behavior
When I launched the beta and used it for the first time, the beta was asking me words that I didn’t reviewed for 8 months or so (when I started Chinese).
So I ended up reviewing words such as “很好”, “老师” or “你好” and on the contrary, all the words that I really needed to practice (added only few hours ago) were not reviewed.
You’re welcome! As for the time taken, noting down what I see doesn’t take much time, although putting it into coherent feedback does take a bit. It is worth the time to me because I’m putting a lot of effort into Chinese currently and Skritter is my most essential tool for that. I’m lucky to have some more time these days, currently semi-retired from building teams to build smartphones (in the past) and mobile apps (Facebook Messenger Kids and Moments most recently), so putting it into my learning tools makes some sense.
I have some more minor bugs to send, but I’ll check them out on 3.0.8 first.
Best thing about software development is the need for new devices.
Awesome, sounds fun! Design is a tough vocation because everyone has an opinion, so that’s brave of you to take on.
My latest feedback from testing 2.08 and 3.0.9 (all bugs verified on 3.0.9):
Auto-advance: generally this is working better for me. The biggest problem is that it is far too slow for “got it”. I used to use 0.9s advance, and now it is defaulting to 66% slower than that. I need to be able to set the duration to make it work for me. This is the biggest reason the new app feels slower for me. On the good side, tapping on an answer to auto-grade it as correct and instantly move on is really handy.
Strokes not working in the drawing area is still happening. Happens a lot when going back to the first character after writing a second character and getting it right. One repro: come back to first char and double finger hold to start the tutorial drawing. Also happens when hitting back quickly after the card advances. It also happens sometimes when moving forward. It feels like it is happening more often now.
It is possible to accidentally skip a question by tapping a grade right before switching cards. It grades the next card even though the grading buttons are not shown (e.g. for definition and pinyin cards) and then auto-advances.
Strokes are still being accepted even if they are written very incorrectly. You can often almost write a different character and get it accepted. I reported it previously, but let me know if you need more info on this.
The auto advance timer doesn’t stop when you hit the back button. It will still complete and move you forward even after you moved back. To report: grade a card, and while auto-advance is counting down, hit back. Observed: goes back one card, then when auto-advance completes (note you can no longer see the progress bar), it goes forward one card. Expected: auto-advance is cancelled if you move off the card.
The Writing count in the Cards section of info seems to get updated incorrectly on the client. In one instance, it said 1/3 (33%) for 動作 (same as the website). Then I wrote the character, then went back to that card right away. It showed 4/6. However, the website showed 2/4, which seems correct.
Adding new words manually is not a great experience. It is very slow, especially on a list that has many words I already have in the queue. Since it is fully done in the background, and has no status until it is fully done, I feel like I can’t leave the app and don’t know when it will finish until it is fully done. Suggestion: add status at the bottom where it shows “20 added”, but show it during the progress instead of only at the end.
Feature request: include the simplified version of the character in Info even if I’m only studying traditional. This is pretty important to my study.
I assume this is a known issue, but starring doesn’t work for me. Cannot enable or disable the star for a word.
The time and due number at the top of the screen are tappable but don’t do anything. I would expect them to not respond to taps
Note that when there are no new words to add, it is a lot slower to fail to add 20 words versus 1, so it is doing extra work and not short circuiting.
Other notes:
The up-stroke on 三點水 no longer erases the card, yay! I saw someone report that casual upstrokes no longer clear the card — this is good, because it was clearing the card when writing the third stroke of 三點水 if you were not careful to get enough angle on it.
The order of cards is still bothering me a lot — I’ll get card just a few cards after one that had the answer to the new one (e.g. a pinyin card a few cards after a tone card).
Mnemonics still do not save. I only mention this because I think I saw it mentioned that this was believed to be fixed. I tried saving a mnemonic for 話.
In earlier versions, adding a word when there are no more available never gave up searching, but it seems to be working fine now.
Banning also seems to be working for me now.
As others noted, auto-add of new words is not working. I have to add new words manually.
Contained characters still not usually showing up. Is this expected? The feature seems to usually not show all characters.
The reordering of cards each time I go out and in of Study is still bothersome, particularly when you are in the middle of a question and you lose it.
I’m loving the updates and seeing the fixes roll in. Let me know if you prefer a new thread for new bug lists like this.
We need specifics so we can adjust strokes on a character by character basis. Or at least a stroke by stroke bases, which is how our system works. Sending general feedback for this stuff is probably a huge pain and a huge ask.
We plan on addressing this at some point in July by providing a feedback button on the vocab info screen that will give you a few options of issues to report on
bad audio
stroke order issue
bad stroke recognition
definition error
official example sentence error
This kind of feedback should let us fix things very quickly in batches. And it’ll be a lot easier for you and others to report. Until then, grade a little stricter than you think you should, and take some notes if you feel like it. Here is how I’m keeping track at the moment:
I take a screenshot of the character with the bad strokes circled for quick reference later. I was focusing on the stroke order for this one, but you get the idea. I’m dumping mine to Slack so the team can see them too, but even an email dump of screenshots like this with a little context could certainly help us dig into the issue a lot faster, and help give some insight into the types of things we should be looking for in future testing.
I’ll be adding some more comments to your detailed report a bit later, but this is something we already have a plan for, but it isn’t going to be included in the next few builds, so I wanted to separate it into its own reply.
A skip button and auto-advance speed control are coming soon. Not sure what build, but we have plans for both to return as soon as we can get to them.
I think this is now fixed in 3.0.11
We have to tune. Raw squids need love. We will focus on this more once we deploy the new feedback system so we can batch fix.
Will investigate and open an issue if we haven’t already fixed this in 3.0.11
Will investigate and patch up. Good find!
I have this report and some other feedback tagged under UX/UI stuff. Expect improvements before official release.
Coming back soon. We are working on making vocab info better this week.
Issue is open for if. I hope we can fix along with other vocab info stuff we are working on.
Good catch. Will open an issue.
We’ll investigate. @josh this seems like something you’d understand in the code much better than me.
Things are generally ordered by due value. I also think that this is a part of the hide button debate a bit in the other thread. At some point down the line when things are stable we can also look at scheduling with a fine tooth comb. For now, I think we have to just say sorry for the reviews. It’s all in the queue so you’ll be learning them at some point, but I do get that having things come too close together is annoying. This also might be a part of some other issues that Josh is fixing. Keep an eye on the spacing in 3.0.12 and let us know if you noticed any improvements
Issue open. Will be a part of vocab info update if we can get it in there.
Issue is open for this. Hope to fix it up soon.
@josh you know this behavior a lot better than me. Thoughts?
Re the batch feedback system, note that they are stroke-level issues that I am seeing, not character-level issues. I sent more info over email a few days ago along with videos.
Yes, studying one thing on one card does make this a bit better. But it still seems inefficient to e.g. ask for the pinyin for a card literally 30 seconds after it was revealed to you on a tone card (tone cards always reveal pinyin). Agreed that there are other things to fix first – my workaround is to study by card type now – first e.g. writing, then pinyin, then definition, then tone.
Yup. Those are very helpful. As Josh warned me, we really have to proceed with caution on this stuff. It can cause some big problems. So it is best to avoid impulse and really think about and test the implications of the changes. Right now we’re opting for over-the-top nice to keep the study experience moving and help beginners.
We do intend to get a batch done at some point soon. That’ll help us create a new workflow as well for future batches.
T-shirt could be fun. Here is an evening illustration that was inspired by my iOS auto-correct. It’s messy and rough, and I’m unsure if this is actually a squid, but the reference photo was fun regardless and I’m calling this v1 for now because I have to work tomorrow!
Awww shucks. It could be SO much better, but I appreciate the kind remarks! I’m not the only one on the team having a little fun with it. @SkritterMichael care to share? And actually, I’m always impressed with just how multi-talented everyone on the Skritter team is. I think, at the core, we’re all passionate about the things we enjoy doing. Skritter, and character learning (thankfully) being among them!!!
Btw, I totally wanna do a cell-shaded version of this thing with a transparent background. It would make a great, funky shirt, which is totally my style. Haha
Fixed in 3.0.14 and we also cleaned up some things with decomps not always displaying on cards. Not everything on the vocab drawer is finished up yet because we’re still targeting loops, but we’ll be working on them.
Apple is Apple, so this will be out at some point tomorrow (I hope)
I’m lucky to have some more time these days, currently semi-retired from building teams to build smartphones (in the past) and mobile apps (Facebook Messenger Kids and Moments most recently), so putting it into my learning tools makes some sense.
