Today I burned my very first items in WaniKani and it was very exciting! Now as I burn more and more, I find it hard to tell whether I burned an item or not. When I type the answer in correctly I almost always immediately go to the next item up for review and don’t have time to see the tiny banner float up that tells me what new SRS category it was moved to - so I don’t notice if it said “Burned” or not.
Now 99% of the time I don’t care what SRS stage it was moved to, but when I burn an item, I want to know! Not only because it’s exciting and satisfying (the realization that you have permanently accomplished something and will never need to do it again - and the realization that you’re now one step closer to a massive goal) but also because I just want some form of clarification that I’ve burned something - even if it’s not celebratory (e.g. the background turns dark gray for a second, or something very basic like that)
Just now I answered an item right and thought it said “Guru” out of the corner of my eye - but I was pretty sure that item was ready to be burned so I was confused. Then I realized, oh, maybe it said “Burn” and I just misread it. But… I don’t know! I have no way of knowing. So now I don’t know if that item will come up for review again later on or not, and I don’t remember what the item was so I can’t just check.
I feel like it’d be great to get some indication/tiny celebration each time you burn an item. Something that excites the little crevices of your brain and makes you realize that, wow, I just accomplished a tiny 6-month-long (or longer!) learning goal. Something that makes you feel like you just made permanent progress that pushes you closer to your end goal and can never be taken away from you. Something that breaks up your 300 reviews into smaller segments instead of just 300 of the exact same thing.
It’s a small addition, and not important by any means, but I feel like it would be amazing! In the mean time, I will just make myself a small Tampermonkey extension to do it for me, lol. Ty for reading.
Oh also, as for what the tiny celebration should be - just a tiny puff of confetti from the spot of the item (e.g. the place where the word appears in Japanese for vocab items) that quickly puffs out and falls to the bottom of the screen would be nice. The background having a quick (like, 0.2 second) animation that fades it from blue/pink/purple (depending on the item type) to the classic “burned dark gray” color would also be awesome. The two together would be even cooler! There are probably also many more cool ideas to use instead, but these two seem like the simplest to implement (like, literally an hour of work or less). Having a tiny flame animation behind the item would also be a cool idea, but likely slightly more work.
