Please Try out our App - Heisig Type

WaniKani API And Third-Party Apps
#1

Hi there,

We run a small software development studio in Kyoto, Japan called Nekologic. We make games, apps and software that are fun and original.

We have just developed a small app called Heisig Type (iOS | Android). This app is a custom keyboard that allows you to input radical keywords (Heisig and Wanikani) in English to display kanji in the autocomplete bar. This allows you to utilise your radical knowledge for Japanese input purposes, increasing the utility of this knowledge and allowing you to input it into dictionaries, chat programs or whatever other app you wish to input Japanese into.

It is a small idea but we hope some of you find it useful. More importantly, as it is in an early stage of development what we would love is if you could:

  • Give us detailed and useful feedback! We’d love to hear what problems you experience, what you would like to see in terms of functionality in this app and so on
  • Let others know about it! Please share it on social media, other communities or wherever else Japanese language learners congregate

We have put our task list public here on Trello for you to see our plans for the app in the future.

We are a small company, and this is just an early release, but we survive and thrive on feedback and shares, and are looking forward to hearing your experiences with it.

Happy studying!

4 Likes
#2

+1 for the name “Nekologic” :cat:

4 Likes
#3

You beat me to it! I love the name! =D

#4

We have to pay to try it, there is only one screenshot and it includes the word commumication
is that even a word? ^^;
I’d like to see more screenshots before buying a program

2 Likes
#5

Yes you have to pay to try it in its current state

We’ve added “more screenshots” and “fix spelling mistake” to the Trello board. Thanks!

#6

Hi! Thanks for letting us know. I agree with @Toyger. I’d like to see more screenshots. I can barely get a sense of how the app works and feels.

Also, I am more than willing to pay for apps and services that I need/want but for paying 2€30 for an app I can’t get the feel of from a company I’ve never heard of (even with such a cool name!) is unlikely to happen. How about try before you buy? allow people to search and use 5 common radicals or something so they can see how good/useful it is before they hit the payway (like wanikani!).

5 Likes
#7

Yeah, I have to agree. I would try it out, even if in a very basic version, to see if I understand how it works and if I do like it/feel the need for it. I probably wont buy it without trying, since I don’t quite get how it works or if I will ever find a use for it. I wanted to try it out just to see how it worked and give feedback, but ain’t paying for that =P

2 Likes
#8

checks out:

IMG_7197.jpg750×614 54.5 KB

can u add Boob tho? also Boobs thx

1 Like
#9

Is this for real? We are expected to pay so you can get:

And we should:

This is terrible PR. If you are, as you say:

[quote=“LiamInJapan, post:1, topic:18903”]
a small company
[/quote] and you:

It’s a terrible idea to ask people for something to help you and then have them pay you for it. That’s like if I went for a haircut and then asked the stylist to pay me at the end.
I most definitely would not then shamelessly spew:

as if it’s a perfectly reasonable position to have.
This is, as you say an

so why are you charging people who will be your testers?

Release a limited version of the app for free which offers the functionality you would like people to test and then ask them if they would be willing to do you the favor of testing your soon-to-be-commercial product for you, so you can fine tune it and have a better offering on the market by the end of it. This way you get the best possible marketing when people love the app and got to be in the exclusive club of testers and tell their friends, and you get bug reports and valuable feedback.

Thoroughly unimpressed by this approach. If anyone on my team had the 金玉 to do this they would not be in a very happy place.

12 Likes
#10

Hi,

Thanks for the useful feedback!

We will make a video to add to the storefront to make how it works more evident. We’ll also try and think of a way of making a free version to try (your idea of a handful of radicals is a good one!).

#11

“Hey! Could you guys test our app and give us some feedback WHILE paying for it? You’re doing us a favour while paying us at the same time!” :slight_smile:

I don’t want to sound rude, but that’s not how the market works, sorry :slight_smile:

I’ll try it out when there’s a free version available ^^

6 Likes
#12

@LiamInJapan I agree, if you’re actively seeking out beta testers to try your product, it’s probably best to offer a free version or to give out demo codes. There are a number of services that allow you to distribute trial versions of software, even iOS and Android apps for testing purposes.

It’s even built into Apple’s ecosystem now:
https://developer.apple.com/testflight/

4 Likes
#13

So you basically made an UI to search through JMdict. With partial French and Russian translation, for some reason.

I don’t think it will sell well.

http://jisho.org, has the same content, free.

1 Like
#14

A tech startup in Kyoto? Are you guys hiring? :smiley:

1 Like
#15

I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for something like this in any state. Even if it was finished, polished, and whatnot.

Especially when you look at the amazing things this community makes available for free.

That aside, is it legal for you to use the Heisig name like that? To me, it implies it is created or endorsed by him.

2 Likes
#16

It’s a custom keyboard, so you can use it with, say messenger, your email client, another dictionary. It’s a system-wide keyboard, not a “standalone app”, a keyboard that allows you to input kanji with radical keywords.

When you use LINE or another chat program and you type “happy”, and a bunch of stickers related to “happy” appear above the keyboard? That’s the best analogy to what this does. Except you can use it with any other application you have installed. We’ll add some screenshots showing it being used with other apps in the next version.

#17

Perhaps someday :slight_smile:

At the moment we’re just trying to get ourselves moving - we have this small tool and another app released, and we have a game in development too (we have a smaller game that we’ll probably release for free, and bits of tech in development for a larger game)

Are you based in Kyoto?

1 Like
#18

While it’s not specifically tied to Heisig or WK, my free dictionary allows me to easily search for kanji by multiple ‘radicals’. It’s free. It’s also a dictionary.

Like others, I completely assumed this was free when I saw it. From what I understand about what it does (it’s just a keyboard, right? It’s not a dictionary?), I’d be very surprised to see more than a handful of people willing to pay for it - especially given the wealth of free stuff out there.

Edit: Sorry, I realise that all sounds pretty negative - but that’s my honest opinion from looking at it. You do have a good name, though. Good luck with any future releases.

#19

I paid $2 to see if it has all the boob-related radicals. It’s 1 for 3!

4 Likes
#20

As @VegasVed and others said, if you’re asking for my assessment, I am not going to pay for it.

It seems like it is in very early development, and the current price is the majority of what I would ever pay for a fully finished version, so that doesn’t sit well, either.

I don’t wish to be rude, but if you’re asking for QA and/or review, it’s standard to actually pay for QA, and to make a gift of the product for review, not the other way around.