Feedback - Suggested Improvements/Feature Request

Bunpro
#1160

Interesting! It’s been so long (263 days to be exact) since I started here I can’t remember what it looked like when I first signed up. Your post got me thinking about a potential splash screen (or whatever you want to call it) for new users that would give them the gist of the website in one brief summary before then returning to the main dashboard. This could essentially be a walkthrough of what to do, tips and tricks, etc.

  • Explanation of paths
  • Quick paragraph on what any differences between the paths could be
  • Recommended way to get the most out of the website
  • Photos of recommended readings
  • How to use custom notes, etc.
  • Link to forum thread for new users with introductions/general chat/questions, etc.
  • Example of different amount of new grammar you could learn per day, etc.

I started as a fresh user and started with the TK path but eventually just opted for BP’s standard path as the sample sentences flowed in a much more logical order. At the end of the day you can only lead the horse to water, but I think there’s always room to improve how the horse gets to the water so to speak.

2 Likes
#1161

Screenshot_20210626-132459_Chrome
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Can these be put back on the opposite sides お願いします? Or make it an option like maybe a right-handed / left-handed mode?

2 Likes
#1162

Still working on adding more N1. We will be adding new N1 pretty much weekly going forward now though. As for audio, we are holding off until we have the sentences fully polished and further adjustments made so we don’t have to rerecord.

1 Like
#1163

Thanks for the suggestion. I can put it into the backlog but priority wise, it probably won’t be gotten to for a while yet. Sorry!

@kaisermon @EdBunpro @conan Better guidance for new users is number two in the backlog right now :slight_smile:

@Johnathan-Weir great suggestion! If it is an option, should the nav come in from the side the button is on?

3 Likes
#1164

Good to hear! I think you could really make it creative and use real user experiences (via blurbs? idk) to say how they went about learning grammar and whatever else helped them personally at the time. So many users here have given me bits and pieces over the nearly year I’ve been here, I think there’s a ton of pure feedback that they could in turn give to the newbies!

1 Like
#1165

Thanks for putting it on the list, at least.

Unrelated bit of feedback: It would be nice to have page numbers for “A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns for Teachers and Learners” in the Readings lists. I’ve been looking things up in there as I go and putting the page numbers in my notes, but it would be nice to have them there to begin with.

#1166

Yeah, if it’s on the right it should open from the right to the left (like it originally was) and if on the left then from left to right (like it is now).

3 Likes
#1167

The thing about how Bunpro works as of right now is that the new user is first given a short, extremely compact version of the grammar point and then offered more reading material. He has absolutely no idea of the actual value of that. This comes to a very common problem with proper education in all levels: if someone gets any amount of information and in any ways is satisfied with it, they will most likely push away further reading. This happens all the times in my line of work, in the case, with news headlines: if it gives information the reader thinks it’s enough for comprehension, they almost all the time won’t bother reading the news piece. It’s how twitter blew up in the first place as a primary source of news for way too much people and why most media outlets will make use of click baiting. People won’t click if the text gives “enough” information.

I really love how Bunpro grammar points are organized, so I don’t think they need to change that. But they should probably be digging sensible data. Start by asking new users if they are total beginners with japanese grammar. Then track how much these users click on the third-party resources and how much time they spend there before coming back. A lot of new users are complete strangers to japanese and it’s very useful to gather data about them so Bunpro can raise that specific public’s retention. They shouldn’t make decisions by only hearing the anedoctal evidences that I and other users bring here, as it is very possible that I’m an exception, but through hard data.

2 Likes
#1168

I think you underestimate the users’ eagerness to click on the external readings if something isn’t clicking. Could be I’m overestimating, but I think the global stats for each level show that evidently people are something right or the avg. would be a lot lower than it is. ^^ There’s some grammar points that require more reading but there’s honestly some too that don’t require any at all, especially if you’re consuming any amount of native material. In the starting stages of N5 this probably isn’t the case. To be honest I’ve found that the community discussions here are usually SO MUCH more useful than most websites because it discusses a lot of the nuances you’re bound to see. Although I wouldn’t mind someone making a thread to conduct a poll on how users began their journey with grammar, I think it’d be pretty interesting! All I know is I am so glad I didn’t start with a textbook because I would have dropped the language right away.

At the end of the day though BP is always going to have to put some trust in the reader to go and make the best decisions for themselves. It’s probably the same mindset that WK uses - they expect their users to be reading instead of trying to remember like 5000+ mnemonics without ever seeing the words in the wild, if that makes sense. Anyways I’ll leave it at that, no point circling the wagon on this but again it’s always fun to hear others opinions on things that I might never have thought about!

3 Likes
#1169

I’ve only been here around 40 days, and went through the N5 and part of N4 in that time. Any and all handholding + resources (especially those discussions) are super helpful. The staff and some of the users give some of the most concise and down to earth explanations I’ve seen so I’ve absolutely fallen in love with reading those threads.

However, I think the new user/learner experience would be better with a little refinement. Bunpro has always come across to me as a supplementary tool, but sometimes it’s a little too good (eg. the easy grammar points) and the design kind of steers it away from that. For example, the lesson breakdown has tabs in the order meaning → examples → reading, which I think encourages jumping into examples and possibly skipping any reading if a point seems to make sense to the user. Despite the flashy colors and icon, I actually forget the link to the community threads are even in the corner when I do my lessons. It also links to threads even when there is no discussion, so initially I was conditioned to ignore those links until I had trouble with some points.

It’s not like I want full on railroading. The relative freedom of this site is one of its best aspects. I just think this is one of those tools where a number of small, otherwise unnoticeable tweaks could probably lead to a drastic improvement. It’s just really hard to pay attention to them when I’m messing up reviews and internally screaming “yo, did I seriously forget だ? how is that even possible!?”

4 Likes
#1170

If there are ever times when the discussion thread is empty and the external readings don’t help much, I would highly highly highly recommend you download the Bunpro Toolbox script that’s in the Script thread. It links to some of my favorite websites like Hinative that usually has people asking the same question you currently have.

I’d love for one day the tool to be officially implemented into the site under the readings (or wherever), I can’t count how many times I’ve used that website for both grammar and also for clarification on the difference between two words that essentially mean the same thing.

1 Like
#1171

Perhaps the the other two “A Dictionary of Japanese Grammar books” integrated into the readings for reference. The beginner book is there, but the intermediate one isn’t. They seem be staples in a lot of people’s Japanese learning curriculum, and were the gold standard for a lot of people and for me(until Bunpro came along). Still, they are very valuable books and I feel that the Intermediate and Advance books being readily referenced will only help Bunpro.

3 Likes
#1172

I don’t know how others feel, but something I miss from WaniKani is having the reviews ratcheted to the nearest hour.

From what I see, Bunpro’s reviews become available exactly the SRS interval time after the last was completed. For example, if you complete a point review at 13:31 and the SRS interval is 4 hours, it’ll next appear at 17:31.

The reason I notice this is that the dashboard tells me that I have 30 reviews coming in this next hour. But, actually, what it means is that I have 3 at the moment, and in about ten minutes I’ll get another 5 through, etc.

I guess that Bunpro’s way is more precise, but it means that instead of clearing my reviews for the hour in a single sitting, they slowly trickle in.

3 Likes
#1173

It actually becomes available on the half hour. So if you completed at 13:47, it’ll next appear at 17:30. But yes, several people have commented that the reviews-in-the-next-hour counter is mismatched with the actual reviews available at the top and bottom of the hour.

2 Likes
#1174

The problem is that in any SRS environment the accuracy’s floor is very high. That’s because most of the time people will get an item N times right before they get it wrong once, and that loops.

I completely agree with you about trusting the user and I don’t think Bunpro should rely on third-party material to work. But the paths are a clear effort to help users that are following some textbook or similar, and Bunpro doesn’t really make it explicit. I went with the Genki path when I first started, and I chose it since I knew Genki was a very consolidated textbook, not because I was studying it, or anything else for that matter.

In anyways, after seeing your take on it, I think I can rephrase my suggestion to @Jake as: while Bunpro works for a share of people that are learning grammar only through the tool (or at least not together with a textbook), when used with a textbook + its path it’s insanely potent and they should capitalize better on it. There are way too many japanese language theory material online, but almost no exercises available. Bunpro fills this imense hole almost perfectly.

1 Like
#1175

The ability to select grammar points that have ghost reviews in the “Cram” menu would be nice, since it can be tiresome to look for them through all points.

4 Likes
#1176

can you consider making all reviews being available exactly at the start at the hour? kinda like with wanikani. the way it’s implemented now, you can see that you have for example 5 reviews at x o’clock, but then you can only do one, and you have to keep refreshing the page to see when new ones are available…

if all reviews unlocked at the start of the hour the you could at least somehow plan them

2 Likes
#1177

I think is well known since this is how the book paths are intended to be and is mentioned in FAQ and ‘About’ pages so users utilize their book as a primary with BP supplementary. There are even pages numbers on the grammar points. Is it a common practice that users are going through book paths without actually using or owning the book/workbook? I see you mentioned other friends had the same experience.

Up to BP if they choose to give specific book recommendations beyond providing the paths. They already help sell textbooks but from what I can see it’s not reciprocated (ex. Genki is not recommending BP). I always thought they should get a publisher agreement or even a faint mention of BP with these texts since it is mutually beneficial.

BP is a very specific grammar exercise of productive output that covers alot of content. Even so, it doesn’t replace my grammar dictionaries (nor do I expect it to) or other modes of grammar practice which are necessary depending on the variety of language goals here. I think they are pretty transparent about it but maybe it comes down to expectations. Perhaps new language learners are used to the marketing of one-stop-shop apps which sells on learning a language for 5 minute a day. I see NativShark is attempting this with depth, but they also cost $1500 and not sure if even fully built yet.

3 Likes
#1178

This is really common, from what I’ve seen. And not just for apps, with everything. A lot of beginners have the mindset of, “I only need Genki to learn Japanese!” which is entirely not true.

I appreciate Bunpro’s honesty that they’re not a one-stop-shop place. Perhaps they could make it more obvious than it is? But I’ve seen so little complaints about how things are run, and the most common seems to be not the lack of clarity with paths, but of how many grammar points to add per day/set of time. (But I’ve seen loads of threads like that on WK too, and they’re even more restrictive with what you can add/review. So I’m not sure how fixable of a problem that is.)

1 Like
#1179

BP is sort of rare in that they can appeal to beginners while having enough depth for intermed/advanced learners (and while giving autonomy to do whatever you want). A narrow single path is great for beginners but pretty painful for experienced learner.

Perhaps a simple tutorial YT video or knowledge base could go a long ways to smooth out the on-boarding experience for new learners just so they have a place to start.

I’ve never seen any of the books on path list but I imagine they drill the basics for that ‘beginner-hump’. I can’t imagine using BP alone for that stuff, it would be pretty difficult without outside practice (at least for me it would be).

3 Likes