Making Progress on the Dashboard

I’m concerned that seeing the radicals and kanji on the dashboards automatically like that will amount to “cheating” because we’ll be reminded of them between reviews.

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I don’t really think that will be an issue. You already see them under NEW UNLOCKS IN THE LAST 30 DAYS on the current dashboard.

I honestly prefer the current dashboard. I don’t see the need for all this information right there. I do appreciate your constantly making improvements though!

(Honestly I ignore pretty much everything on the dashboard already.)

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Since the top bar goes only to the next level (which is what new users will care about), it might make sense to have the kanji and radicals do the same: Progress to Guru only (instead of all the way to burn). …and might ease on the bulkiness, depending on how you go about it.

I see what your going for and I think I get it, even though I’m not a new user.

If we oldies can learn how to study and add scripts, we can adapt :slight_smile: New people have harder challenges and I feel like the kanji and radical progress bars would have been beneficial to me in my early days. I’m pretty sure my kiddo (who will be on WK someday) would find the new dash easier/more encouraging.

Superficial request: Could we get a little encouraging durtle? Like the egg hatching and then at guru becoming a Wise Durtle or something? Maybe that’s too crowded/too much going on, ha ha.

Also, I really like the progress bar going all the way to burn, just not for the dash, but maybe on the level overview page there could be a fun collapsable menu (that looks like the current dash) to see how far I’ve gotten?

I guess I’m saying…I like it…even more with some of the tweaks people mentioned. The work is appreciated.

Also, 0 glitches (using an ipad w/ safari)

Edit: the hover works the same for me as the old dash–like a click (opens a new window and no actual hover doowopadoo of course). In other words, the new format of getting to see more details on my dash is super helpful for touch-screen users like me.

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I agree with everyone who says it’s just way too bulky. I use the Dashboard Progress Plus, which is perfect. I understand you’re going for the novice user, but… I think actually the novice user will have trouble grasping the “big picture” this way, since you have to scroll through pages of kanji to understand how many there are and when they will show up for review. I think a version of DPP with more “explanation” could be really helpful to novices instead.

Or maybe you could group kanji together by what SRS stage they are. I don’t think anyone needs to know exactly when they started learning them, which is the only way they’d differ within a group? But if you could group them, maybe that would compress it enough…

Also, FWIW I don’t like clicks when I can hover. Perhaps the (i) button could be a hover as well as a click.

And saying it will show up for review in a day is not so useful, I strongly prefer “at 2:00pm” again as other scripts do.

Anyway, can we assume that we will be able to turn off the bulky radical/kanji display? I guess we can always make a script for that?

Good luck & thanks for trying to make things better!

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This is me too – I keep trying to click the top-right corner of the Progress frame because I feel like it should be a dropdown (a rollup?). I can’t see it all at a glance on my screen without scrolling and it bugs me; the old dashboard, even with scripts installed, I could see everything without having to scroll at all.

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If I was to speculate on what this could mean, we might be able to view info from previous levels on the dashboard in the future :thinking:

It’s the only thing that makes sense to me given that they are displaying all the SRS stages.

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@viet Add top: 0px; to .timeline__stage--0. Otherwise, it slips down in Firefox ESR.
image

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My take on the new layout:

I like how there is more information readily available on the desktop. However, as others have said, it feels clunky. It takes up an unnecessary amount of space. Perhaps there could be some sort of hover-over information, or more information shown by scrolling to the side.

I honestly vastly prefer the current dashboard. It really didn’t take me very long at all to figure it out when I started.

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The dashboard is where I want to see everything at a glance. This requires me to scroll so much. Also none of the scripts seem to run on this page without modification which is a shame because I’m definitely replacing this new look.

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It’s been a while since I started Wanikani but can’t there just be an introduction walkthrough thing after you sign up? Like before you can do any lessons you have to go through the intro or something.

Unless that’s already a thing? Again I don’t remember.

It could also go to explain a less bulky and more efficient dashboard lol.

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At least on a desktop, the amount of horizontal space used for each Kanji is probably way more than needed (IMO the progress bars are so large as to be harder to understand). I’d suggest making each item at least half as wide, if not narrower, and having them flow between multiple columns.

If the main concern is “how do we make this easy to understand for new users” and a secondary concern of “useful to knowledgeable users”, I’d consider showing less information for each Kanji. IE, if the kanji is locked, only show the Lock. If it is unlocked, don’t show the lock symbol, just show progress up to “Guru”. If it is guru’d, only show progress from Guru to Burn. That will reduce the amount of information shown to a new user, give them a feeling of progress, and also increase information density for power users. Here is a poorly done photoshop as an example:

To make the layout responsive for mobile, the grid would need to reflow into fewer columns, until it ends up in one column much like what you have now.

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would be good if it told you the kanji title and reading when you hover over it
but looks good

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Oh no, my scripts!

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Oooo this is so cool!
looks very nice, :upside_down_face:
and the little information buttons are 超ファンシー

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While I think the dashboard needs a redesign, I’m not happy with this one. While it’s good that you’re trying to make something appealing to new users, for me as a veteran user this is an overly-bloated and low-information display. I’ve been using WK for over a year and I looked at this redesign and couldn’t immediately figure out what it was trying to convey.

My own suggestions, to be taken with a grain of salt:

  1. Get rid of the old “new unlocks”, “critical condition items” and “burned items in the last 30 days” boxes because they’re not necessary. (I’d also remove the community topics section, as well, but a lot of people seem to enjoy it. I’m just here to study kanji and vocab, though, and find it a distraction.)

  2. Track the progress of each kanji and radical only to the level unlock, not its entire completion. Full completion information can be accessed on the kanji-specific page with the readings, etc. I don’t understand your decision here at all. The kanji are replaced at level-up, so what do I care about their total progress? Just display it elsewhere. I want to know what the kanji are on that level and how far I am towards leveling up. That’s literally it. Additionally, displaying the full leveling of the kanji is confusing to me, a veteran user, and I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be even more confusing to a new user: “So I have to burn all these to get to the next level? But doesn’t that take 6 months?”

  1. Compress the progress info. I currently have to scroll down, hit a view more button, then scroll even more. I want all the relevant information above the fold. At the very least get rid of the button. Why would I not want to see all the kanji in my level? Again, seeing the kanji and my progress towards leveling up is all that I care about. You’re not giving me the only thing I care about.

When I saw this new layout my first thought was: “I hate it” and my second thought was “I can’t wait for a plugin to replace this with the old layout, which I still didn’t really like but is vastly preferable to this.”

I don’t typically have strong feelings about this kind of thing, but I visit WK a few times a day and I find this new layout is not at all conducive to my kanji studying, and is actually kind of antithetical to it. In practice I’m just going to ignore it and treat leveling up like a gift rather than a planned experience until the aforementioned plugin arrives.

I love WK and y’all’ve done right by me so far, but I really, really dislike this layout, and think you should reconsider it.

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I prefer the current dashboard, running Ultimate Timeline, Dashboard Progress Plus, and Exact Review Time, those scripts provide all the information I want at a glance.
With that said, if it could be reworked to take up less space and if the progress bars showed which SRS stage a kanji/radical was up to (as in Apprentice Stage 3 or whatever) without having to click each progress bar, I’d be much more inclined to like it, especially if Ultimate Timeline can be adjusted to work, I rely on that script to plan out my week :flushed:
Also, I would agree that the progress bars probably don’t need to show all progress at once, maybe have a smaller bar showing the stages to pass, and then once a kanji has been passed show a badge indicating guru 1 or 2, master, (back to) apprentice, and so on, whatever stage its at?

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This is good! I like this!

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I agree with most of the feedback above. While this information can be useful, especially if you’re waiting for one or two kanji to move to the next level, it shouldn’t be at the top of the page.
I preferred the old format where I could quickly glimpse what kanji I am working on, then click on them for more info. This isn’t important enough for the dashboard for me, or should at least be lower on the page.

Will we have an option to continue using the old version of the site?

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