New super-easy flashcard system

[HW60]

The discussion on SRS in the thread „Mapping my Understanding of SRS to Pleco Flashcard Settings” covers at least two problems simultaneously, namely the New super-easy flashcard system and the procedure when falling behind. My impression is that these two problems are often mixed up. I would like to start this new thread for the new system therefore to separate the arguments and will start a new thread on "Falling behind" afterwards.






What is the actual situation?

• back in the WM days we crammed in all sorts of silly flashcard functionality without thinking it through properly and the usability of the system has suffered as a result

What do we know about the new system?

• It's not that definite, just some scribblings in a notebook at this point
• Hence my desire to come up with something more intelligent
• eye towards simplicity and ease-of-use
• solve it in a way that will benefit every user of our flashcard system rather than just a few
• a) Remove rarely-used or difficult-to-continue-supporting options;
• b) Streamline the configuration UI, both by taking away and more intelligently burying options;
• c) Redesign the SRS system to better handle tricky cases like long delays between reviews automatically
• d) Add new features

Why not limit the daily number of cards in SRS?

• But honestly, combining SRS with a set number of cards simply doesn't work
• if you don't keep up with the cards you have due for review on a particular day, you're going to forget lots of words, because you won't have reviewed them often enough. We do, however, plan to add some options to make it easier to bury some cards if you have too many due for review
• the same problem I have with limiting the number of cards in SRS in general - if done carelessly you can end up not reviewing enough and losing a lot of what you've learned
• it's already much too easy for someone to configure Pleco flashcards in such a way as to prevent them from successfully learning anything
• The problem is that then people would misuse it - we could have easily added a "number of cards" option for spaced repetition a long time ago, but we didn't because SRS simply doesn't work if you keep such an option enabled all the time without doing anything else to manage the number of cards due for review.
• people will enable that option and never turn it off, thus never catching up and eventually reviewing cards farther and farther behind schedule
• to be honest the thing I'm getting stuck on is this insistence on setting a limit; the SRS system already prioritizes the most overdue cards when you start a new review, so if you just manually stop after 200 cards you'll have the exact same behavior that you would have had if we stopped automatically
• So is it really so necessary that we add an that automatic stopping option? An option that's going to do more harm than good for anybody who doesn't know what they're doing with SRS? At least until we've got this new super-easy system working (and have buried most of the more advanced options off in a sub-subscreen with a warning the first time you try to use them) it seems like for the vast majority of users it'll only make things worse.

I think the somewhat emotional discussion on a daily card limit has mainly to do with the problem of Falling behind, and it might be a good idea to discuss it in a separate thread.




There are several ways to improve Pleco’s flashcard system:
1. Setup a communication between Pleco and the user

Pleco knows much about the user: the size of the flashcard deck, the daily amount of cards reviewed, the result of the reviews for every card, the Tweak parameters of the Scoring system, the number of days since last review, if the user is experienced using Pleco or advanced in Chinese or not – Pleco knows more than the user himself. But when the user starts a session and does not get a flashcard at all, Pleco either displays a universal message “No cards found” or "Session Complete". Pleco could display: “You did already 32 cards today and will have to review 27 tomorrow. If you increase your score filter from xxx to yyy, you will get 10 more cards.” and much more helpful information. There are lots of totally different situations in which Pleco could either give immediate advice or ask the user what he intends to do. He could tell the user how many days it will approximately take to learn all cards of the actual deck with the actual settings.​

2. Instruction Manual not from the point of view of the user

I like the Instruction Manual, because with Google Search I can find all details of Pleco’s functions. But if I have a particular problem, it takes a long time searching (or much better: a short question to the Forum with an extremely quick and exhaustive answer by Mike (!), almost the biggest advantage of Pleco btw). Even with some FAQs now the Manual is far away from being helpful to the less advanced user. All information is on “what can Pleco do”, no information “how can the user solve his problem using Pleco”.​

3. Is the normal Pleco user unable or unwilling to do the right things?

Probably he does the wrong things like “configure Pleco flashcards in such a way as to prevent him from successfully learning anything” because he is unable to do the right things. But here I see a strong correlation with communication and manual: if Pleco would be able to communicate with the user, carefully asking for input when setting up hidden parameters, the standard user would make less mistakes or would get a hint: “You should only continue with these settings if you know what you are doing. Otherwise …” and then Pleco could help the user changing his settings – if the user wants to.​

4. One-Button solution for settings

One comparatively easy way to reduce complexity for the basic or average user would be to look for some 3, 4 or 5 different Pleco settings, depending on the goals and wishes of the user like daily amount of flashcards, total number of flashcards, number of new cards, new user of Pleco, new student of Chinese etc. Pleco could even analyse the flashcard deck and make a proposal or ask some additional questions, e.g. how does the user want to review 5,000 newly imported HSK flashcards as to the daily amount of cards. These 3-5 different situations could lead to 3-5 buttons which take care of all hidden settings. At the beginning of each flashcard review Pleco could check if the selected button is still appropriate (the Pleco beginner becomes an advanced user etc.). The advanced user could still do his settings at own risk. Maybe this is close to the new super-easy system …​

​

I think most of Mike’s fears that users might misuse Pleco’s setting could be covered by the above communication. And if the Pleco beginner in spite of that communication still changes the Tweak parameters, it is not your fault Mike!

 

[mikelove]

1. This might help for advanced users, but "If you increase your score filter from xxx to yyy, you will get 10 more cards” is going to go over most people's heads - what should happen in that case is for us to quietly come up with some more cards to study without any extra configuration needed.

2. Again, mostly an advanced user thing - if casual users still need to consult the instruction manual to use flashcards after we finish this, then we haven't really achieved our goal.

3. To be honest, I expect the vast majority of users won't bother thinking about these settings once we give them the option not to, so I'm not inclined to put a whole lot of effort into then making the advanced settings screens usable - we could certainly do a better job with inline help at least, but once someone's indicated they want to work with advanced settings we'll tell them what each setting does but leave them on their own aside from that. (but offer an easy way to reset them and go back to the defaults if they don't like them)

4. Somewhat along those lines, yes, but some of them will probably be different settings, and in fact they may be totally independent - i.e. the new easier system has its own impossible-to-misconfigure-too-badly algorithm rather than just being a particular configuration of the one for advanced users. I don't think we need even this many inputs, though - Chinese level / Pleco user level we already know from the database, and the new card introduction should be determined automatically by how many flashcards they want to study per day and how successful they turn out to be at learning them.