I am finding the new interface is distracting me from studying. Publishing the old one under a different URL is a great idea. I found the old one slick and professional and enabled me to focus 100% on studying.
5 Likes
Just did my first review session after the update and had to quit it before ending. Stuff like te double-check script might seem like cheating or a lazy tool for some, but there are a lot of us whose mother language is not English, so the association Japanese-English sometimes wonāt work as it will for native English spekars. Just failed to burn č¦³åæµ because āideaā and āconceptā and ānotionā can be synonyms in my language, and č¦³åæµ is actually a word I use in my Japanese interactions, itās already part of my Japanese lexicom, so I do know the nuance it carries in Japanese. Itās a damn frustrating feeling to āfailā knowing that your answer was correct, and frustration is definitely not a thing Iām looking for when studying Japanese.
I know this issue will probably get solved by the script developer sooner than later, but just wanted to point it our here. Overall, I really disliked the new UX, but I can get used to it, I think itās quite natural when something that youāre very used to gets changed. But, until then, seriously considering getting into vacation mode. Wanikani was an amazing tool for me because it made learning kanji, which is something almost always mechanic and boring, a somewhat pleasant experience, but now itās just feeling like a slog. =/
4 Likes
Is it just me, or does the overwhelming consensus here seem to be that they might want to go back to the drawing board on this updateā¦?
10 Likes
No problem!
As it happens, I work in educational software as a visual artist at a company that has made aā¦ lot of mistakes (we tried to warn them!) So, I have enough knowledge and opinions to be dangerous. 
I also know the pains of UI and UX design, and also some of the struggles (and pitfalls!) of having to implement Accessibility-serving features.
I got a little snarkier than I probably should have in places, but I felt the WK team deserved some useable feedback. A sea of āI hate it, it sucks!ā without a detailed explanation as to why is no help to anyone. Then the WK team just has to sort ofā¦ guess. If people can say, āhereās specifically my pain point,ā then they have a real opportunity to find a solution.
5 Likes
This made me angry enough that I created a one line user script that forces the popup label background to match the text entry background.
WaniKani Consistent Correct Color
I hope this helps you @mikesol and anyone else in the same boat.
8 Likes
The new UI is genuinely pretty horrid and feels like a significant step back in quality. Plus temporarily killing off userscripts for the time beingā¦not very jouzu, Wanikani, not very jouzu.
11 Likes
Iām pretty sure on the previous version it pulled in both the meaning and reading, but collapsed the one you werenāt doing, so in theory you could peek at something you hadnāt been asked. I only ever looked once I had a wrong answer so I donāt know for sure but I assume it would let you look after half a correct answer.
I donāt object to all sections being there as itās nice to be able to review a wrong answer, but the visual hierarchy needs fixing so the item related to the review is most prominent and the other parts are secondary.
I have 23 scripts installed. A few?
I donāt think so. As far as I understand what broke the scripts wasnāt the UI changes, but changes to the WK backend which will make it easier for WK to make future changes (as well as making it easier for new scripts to change UI elements). The negativity in this thread seems to be people who disliked the specific UI changes weāve seen (this can be easily tweaked, by WK and by new userscripts) and people who are just frustrated that scripts need to be updated and who are using the opportunity to petition WK to implement some userscripts natively. Iām in the latter category, but I donāt think rolling back the update at this point is a good idea.
5 Likes
Drawing board, as in rollback and re-do everything? Not even close.
Also, keep in mind that you only hear from people here who bothered to click on the announcement and post in the thread.
The vast majority of WK users overall are probably just fine.
7 Likes
I know software updates and changes over time but I truly donāt even understand what this update brought. All my scripts are broken, making the site suck to use, and apparently to the end of making the UI slightly different in ways I donāt particularly care for. Why did you do this again?
Got 159 reviews coming up tomorrow. I guess I just have to wait and hope Lightning and Double Check get updated by their devs real fast or Iāll just be letting them sit around.
1 Like
They say Double Check is going to take 2-3 days, so RIP I guess
I just completed a review session. The spacebar wasnāt working when trying to expand description. It sounds like that should not have been impacted by the update. A bug maybe?
I was already not very impressed when I tested the Beta-Version a few weeks back, but figured I could get used to the new UI (hasnĀ“t happened yet, quite the contrary even)
I was also already worried about the removal of the summary page and itĀ“s bothering me even more then I thought it would. I think it was mentioned somewhere that this is due to the removal of time outs? Although I consider this a great feature, I would gladly trade it back for the summary.
Scripts not working is also rather unpleasant, hoping and praying that all of my most important ones will get updates.
IĀ“m happy to be able to add synonyms directly in lessons, but overall this update is still making my experience much worse than before
Although itās too early for me to give detailed feedback on all the UI changes, I can say that the breaking of many userscripts that I depend on is certainly frustrating. I know that userscripts arenāt officially supported by WaniKani, but many of them offer essential functionality that really should have been a part of vanilla WaniKani by now. Ignoring answers to correct a typo, back to back reading & meaning ordering, SRS level and item type orderingāthese are all important and basic features that this community shouldnāt have to rely on third-party developers for.
2 Likes
I donāt think so. Itās probably a huge platform improvement behind the scenes that will enable them to make future feature developments much more rapidly. Which will ultimately be a good thing.
The problem is that the user experience has been negatively impacted. Which, ultimately is all that a paying customer cares about (and rightly so).
So the update probably doesnāt need to go back to the drawing board. Just the manner of the release. Little to no communication or user feedback process. Removal/breaking of features and breaking important 3rd party compatibility.
To be clear, I know nobody at WK did this with bad intentions. Just an impact misjudgement IMHO. Running companies is hard. Tech is hard. But at the same time you donāt get to take hundreds of dollars of money from customers and opt out of customer pushback. People are right to complain.
16 Likes
I actually found review summaries to be useful because I can see exactly all the words I made mistakes on in the last session. Also itās satisfying to see a high correct %. Itās a quiz after all. I like to be graded. Please bring back the review summary. Thank you
At least make it an option for people who still want it.
5 Likes
Question, how hard is this for a code idiot to impliment? Youāve done, exactly what I would want. Different colors probably for me but to start, this would be a wonderous improvment since I, like you have age related vision issues cropping up and a dark mode really helps!
Yeaaaahā¦ The more Iām going through reviews, the more Iām trying to understand what exactly the thought process here was? This is hardly a case of, āget used to it, youāll learn to love it.ā
Sure, the awful readability for hotkeys was fixed, but somehow we sacrificed the readability of everything else? The meaning, reading, and context tabs are hardly legible. You fixed the hotkey section because of the awful light grey font, but choose to use that same awful font in arguably much more important areas. And maybe Iām not remembering correctly from doing reviews literally yesterday, but I also donāt remember these sections needing significant scrolling, but now the expansion of these tabs reveals an essay-length page for a few lines of very, very relevant information.
I donāt even see how this update would be beneficial for newcomers to WK either. The blowback here from this update should really, really be taken into consideration and rolled back ASAP. 3rd party devs shouldnāt have to take additional time off from their lives to fix a self-inflicted wound to the heart. Not to be more dramatic/rude than I may already sound, but it seems rather clear that whoever is tasked with designing these UI overhauls doesnāt actually use WK on a daily basisāit cannot be understated, almost nothing about this update makes sense or is an improvement on anything. Itās really, reallyā¦really bad.
22 Likes
This doesnāt affect the API and how it works, does it? I can subsist for a while on the third party WK app I use on my tablet with a bluetooth keyboard that has all the same good features built into it while I wait for script devs to fix the website app and re-add all the necessary features back.
Flaming Durtles (dunno why they call it that) lets me undo an answer to correct a typo or mark a close-enough correct and only asks one stroke of the enter key for a correct answer so I can move onto the next.