Actually I have 33 / 37 kanji cleared according to the list, but the progress bar insists it’s actually 33 / 34? What’s going on with that?
I believe it is because you do not need to pass all 37 of the kanji to be able to progress to the next level, only 34 of them.
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You only need to guru 90% of kanji to level up
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Oh, it counts up to the 90% threshold rather than 100% completion? That… uh… makes sense but could probably be communicated better in the UI?
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Perhaps, but if you hover over the checkmark it does say as much
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The progress bar used to be different and showed all items with an indicator at 90%. They changed it because it was allegedly confusing people.
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Yes but why would I try hovering on the checkmark?
Like, the reason I noticed this is because I saw the progress bar, thought “this is more than 90%, why am I not leveling up”, then I counted the kanji and I was slightly below the 90% threshold, and I still did not figure out that the progress bar is based on the 90% threshold.
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If something isn’t clear it’s common that more information is available upon hover
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Yeah, I had the same confusion with that progress bar when it was first introduced… I even sent them an email reporting the miscount as clearly the number X in the text “of X kanji” did not match the number of kanji in that level 
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As a professional software developer , I would not ever put a hovertext on a non-interactive element unless there is a clear visual indication of that hovertext (i. e. a question mark icon). Users do not just try to hover on everything, hoping that maybe there is a hovertext there.
You could easily make this easier to parse - have the progress bar go up to 100%, and have a line at 90% marking the level-up threshold. Or change the text to “31/37 kanji cleared, 34 necessary for level-up”.
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Apparently I do
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Which it clearly no longer is. /snark
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why not just write “You need 90% of kanji, or [insert number], guru’ed to pass to the next level” near the bar instead of a hover?
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I was so sure this topic would be about counters 
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Well I’m not saying I don’t have problems with those…
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I also just hover over everything unless it’s something like a paragraph of text. Stuff like progress bars and other visual elements tend to have tooltips with more exact data on hover.
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They tried that. It didn’t work.
As d-hermit already pointed out:
but its not exactly what im referencing. keep the progress the bar the same, and just add some text like that. it should be fairly simple to understand, and better than the current hover system
While I personally believe that great design can often preclude the need to “RTFM”, this is explained in the WaniKani knowledge guide:
In order to level up, you need to get a specific number of kanji to Guru in your current level. To “pass” something means to get that item to the Guru stage.
The specific number of kanji you need to get to Guru is shown on your progress bar and changes with each level. For example, you need to get 17 kanji to Guru out of the total 18 kanji for Level 1. Once you hit this number and the progress bar fills up, you will level up!
Also, hover functionality is falling out of favor in industry best practices for any website that is “mobile first”, simply because you can’t hover on mobile device, so I also understand why one wouldn’t hover over an element to see if an easter egg would pop out.
Like I said before, I know that the threshold for leveling up is 90% and still couldn’t figure out on my own how the progress bar works.
So I still uphold the opinion that this is not optimal UX design.
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