Replace "Streak" With "Days Studied" [Suggestion]

Bunpro
#41

I agree with this completely, and I feel like this is the case for most people. The problem comes when a person misses a day. Not everyone takes missing a day the same. Some people don’t mind, while others can get discouraged and end up taking a long break. While having a streak can be very helpful, it also brings the possibility of demoralizing someone and making it feel like they’ve lost what they’ve been working for.

This is true, but by replacing the streak it also gets rid of the negative effect it has on people when they lose it.

My take is that those who really benefit from streaks, but also don’t get discouraged when losing it, could keep track of their streak on their own. I just feel like those who are new learners may end up getting really motivated by having a streak, and if they end up missing it, some will end up getting discouraged and stop.

@mrnoone
I think this would be best given everyone’s opinion. I also feel like having it default to “days studied” for new learners might be best.

The only issue is that if I’m given the option - I’m probably just going to have it set on streaks. It’s ironic, but I enjoy seeing a streak. However, if streak wasn’t an option then I wouldn’t mind not seeing it, it’d be more of me having peace of mind not knowing that a streak is being stored and losing that thought of I absolutely need to maintain it. Once again I know this is just how streaks treat me, so I mean if I’m the only one then it probably doesn’t matter. But I can’t help but think how new learners might fall into this and end up being discouraged from learning Japanese if they lose their streak.

3 Likes
#42

Personaly I like the streaks but if it was swapped for days studied then I would be fine. I think having a way to miss a day every so often but keep the streak would be ideal. Losing a streak sucks but its a great motivator to show up every day. I cant help but want to try get the streak as high as I can get it and I dont know if days studied would have the same effect

2 Likes
#43

I think “days studied” should be separate from streak, but with the option to choose between streak and percent days studied. That way missing a day would bring you down to say 99% instead of resetting you to 0. It should give motivation to maintain consistency without feeling like you’re starting over (because you aren’t).

3 Likes
#44

I would welcome being able to choose to display streak, days studied, or neither. Each user can customize their dashboard to their preference.

At one point I had 350+ day streak. Didn’t care for any other badges but I was keen on achieving the “Streak 365.” And while its ultimately just a number, I was definitely bummed to lose the streak and sympathize with anyone that feel a bit demotivated seeing theirs drop back to single digits. Can’t say for sure but maybe it would have stung less if there was something like “back on the saddle” badge for lost streaks.

4 Likes
#45

Personally, I would dislike 99% more than breaking a streak. With a streak you can climb back up to where you were and at some point you’ll forget about the lost days. With “Percent Days Studied”, if you miss a day and dip down to 99% there is no coming back. You can never bring it back up to 100% even if you study 10 000 days straight. That would bother me way more.

I do like “Total Days Studied”, tho, and having the option to change it for myself to show up instead of the streak. That’s a good reminder of how much work I’ve put in and how far I’ve come.

5 Likes
#46

I think it should be an opt in feature and it would be one I’d certainly use.
Perhaps even you could set a start date yourself, and out from that it would calculate % of days studies and show it in an days studied/days since you started type way

3 Likes
#47

So here’s basically how I use the site daily:

Whenever I have time I visit the site and knock out whatever reviews are available. I’m also working through the 新完全マスター books so I only add a grammar point if it’s next in the sequence. Other than that, I try to review as much as possible. So when I log in my immediate care is…

  • How many reviews I have to do now.
  • What time would be good to review again (e.g. it’d be weird to just do a review for one grammar point, I might as well do a handful at once two hours from now.)
  • My level (Oooh I’m almost 60!)
  • My experience (Oooh I might level up soon!)

I then go to statistics to see…

  • Trends of my % accuracy for the different JLPT levels (e.g. my N3 is slowly dropping because all the points I’m encountering now are things I have forgotten.)
  • The general curve of “breakdown by streak” to see where my average SRS level is sitting.

After that I may glance at badges, because earning them is fun. But during this time I really don’t look at my streak or my last session %. Like I said earlier, I don’t hate them, but since my streak reset awhile ago I don’t really have any emotion invested in it anymore knowing full well I might have another night out causing it to reset. I also don’t look at my % correct last session because the information is too broad. If the % is high that’s great, but if it drops into the 70s I don’t really know what JLPT level is giving me trouble or what grammar points that caused the drop.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’d like more data that proves to me I’m progressing in my studies or proves to me I’m not slacking off. And the data that is provided to me I would like to be useful in some sort of way.

But ultimately I’m more concerned about passing the JLPT. So should streaks stay, go, or become something else it wouldn’t really bother me. I wouldn’t get excited about losing it and whatever it may or may not be replaced with wouldn’t be positive or negative to me; I would get excited about more useful data that would help me make inferences about how my studying is going.

2 Likes
#48

Oh another thing that some sites do: Days studied in the past 30 days. (Basically similar to percentage.) So if you’re studying daily you can be motivated to keep that number at 30/30. But if for some reason you miss a day you’re only ‘losing’ 30 days of work (and it’ll be a 29/30, rather than a 0). You could also keep doing badges for X number of ‘perfect months’. Each 30 day streak individually, doesn’t have to be in succession.

This ofc still would be useless for people who only have time to study on weekends/take weekends off.

9 Likes
#49

As someone having major troubles keeping up a daily routine having a streak visible is invaluable to me. It’s one of my biggest motivating factors to do at least one review - which results most times in doing a couple anyway.

Also, as someone having major troubles keeping up a routine over long periods of time I had long breaks, setbacks and resets, so seeing “days studied” would be interesting and motivating as well. I tend to forget how much effort I actually already put into this.

In short: I see no reason for not including both. Maybe have an option in the setting where you can customized the dashboard, showing both, one or none.

6 Likes
#50

I would love this. While I wouldn’t say I care about my streak in general, seeing it suddenly drop to ‘0’ has caused me to lose motivation for the day / stopped using bunpro for a while on several occasions. I never stopped learning Japanese due to it as it doesn’t really touch on my core motivation, but I have dropped this (and other tools with streaks) for quite long on occasions due to a streak that I don’t really even care that much about resetting to 0 :man_shrugging:

It just feels like all your hard work lapsing I guess, don’t know how else to describe it. For me personally it never motivates but it has certainly demotivated me, thus I don’t really like the streak future.

10 Likes
#51

Just wanted to point out that this sounds like an extremely awesome idea! :heart:

10 Likes
#52

I still think the best solution (keeping the motivational benefits of a streak counter, but mitigating the demoralizing effects of accidentially missing a day) would be the saving grace system that was described e.g. Replace "Streak" With "Days Studied" [Suggestion] - #22 by nekoyama.

edit: Oh, but “Days studied in the past 30 days” sounds great too, actually!

4 Likes
#53

Days studied within a rolling window of x days? Something like “% days studied this year”?

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