Suggestion: tiered settings levels and actions based on experience

[thomasaeh1]

Hello, I hope this finds you well.

I would like to suggest that you please implement a tiered settings and actions system based on the level of users’ experience. Anki is highly customisable and has a lot of options. This makes it powerful to users. This can also, however, be confusing to novice users. It may be useful, therefore, to show users a number and depth of settings, options, and actions based on their experience, for example ranging from “beginner” to “expert”. This may make the app more usable and intuitive, especially for new users.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

[puel]

Disagree.

Having preferences cordoned off into Basic/Advanced is an arbitrary organization method that is frowned-upon (at least from what I read).

It is counterintuitively frustrating and time-consuming because users have to guess and try to predict where the option that they are searching for is, wehther it’s under Basic or Advanced, etc.

Actually, didn’t Anki used to do this very thing (splitting options into Basic/Advanced), and get rid of it and arrive where it is today?

[khs]

Yes I think the default settings should be tweaked over time so 90% of users would not need to do any editing, and only allow the customization for those who know what the parameters really mean.

[DiveShallow]

This is another excellent suggestion. I love this guy. Really though. This is needed so bad. I know a lot of people who use quizlet because anki is intimidating.

[suiyuan]

@Expertium @Shigeyuki Found this old thread about the settings layout.

Regarding the discussion being held in the Beta Testing subforum, I mostly agree with this post by Expertium:

@Expertium

This is just my opinion, but if I were to make the whole Beginner/Professional layouts thing, in the Beginner layout the following settings would be visible:

1. New cards per day and review cards per day
2. Leech threshold and action
3. Burying siblings
4. Sutff related to the timer

However, to be honest, I think even these settings are a bit overwhelming to someone new to Anki, or someone who just wants to get on with learning without having to understand new internal terms like “leech” or “siblings”, etc. These might seem intuitive for people that have used Anki for a while, but they are not, and only power-beginners would even have the disposition to try to understand them or read through the documentation and tooltips.

I believe, for beginners, the most useful feature would be to ask how much time they want to spend every day on Anki. When starting a new deck, getting 10 new cards per day might seem too little (less than 5 minutes probably), but after a week or so it might take 15 minutes a day with reviews. Talking time seems much close to the actual experience than talking numbers of new cards.

For me, the ideal configuration would be: when a user enters the deck options they’d see the beginner interface (with a toggle at the beginning to “Show full options” or whatever the name, showing the current layout). The “beginner” layout would show a few, easy to understand questions to help set things up. These could be:

1. How much time do you want to spend studying in Anki every day? [with a time selector] [maybe explaining this quantity of time will be reached within a few days]
2. Do you want to see the cards in the original order or random order? [original/random]
3. How many times do you want to fail a card before it is blocked from appearing again? [number selector]
4. Do you want to see cards with related information on the same day? [yes/no]

Question 1 would set the New cards/day and Maximum reviews/day automatically under the hood.
Question 2 would set the Insertion order.
Question 3 would set the leech threshold (and I think default the action to suspend?).
Question 4 would set the siblings settings.

I would just leave the show timer in the advanced layout, defaulting to not showing it. And if the “Show next review time” is moved here from general Preferences (I think I read someone suggesting that), I would also keep it under advanced and defaulting to not showing (to avoid misjudging).

In summary, in my opinion, beginners should not play too much with deck options, but if they go into the menu, they should be asked about what they are most interested in modifying, and asking a few questions seems more straight-forward than having to deal with the current layout as a novice.

Just my two cents.

[Expertium]

@suiyuan

I believe, for beginners, the most useful feature would be to ask how much time they want to spend every day on Anki.

But that depends both on the number of new cards/review cards learned per day and on the amount of time spent per card. The former can be controlled by the app, the latter cannot.
Though, I suppose it’s possible to change your question and then break it down into two questions. One would be related to the number of new cards/review cards, the second would be related to the timer. But even then, the timer only controls how much time is recorded, not how much time is actually spent.

[suiyuan]

Sure, time spent on a card is variable, but it is possible to make an approximation. I, personally, don’t spend more than 30 seconds on a card, unless I am doing something else at the same time. (Of course, it depends on the card type, content, etc., another average might be better suited, but there won’t be that big of a difference. And if the user isn’t satisfied with the result, they can come back and change it at any time).

I would probably suggest showing an interval: 10-15 minutes a day, 15-20 min a day, etc.

Ideally, Anki would make an estimate based on personalized real usage, but I think it would make implementing this more difficult and that an approximation is more than enough. What I don’t want is for people to underestimate the time they will have to dedicate to Anki if they have 20 new cards per day. The first few days might be ok, but in a few days they’ll need at least 30 minutes of their day and will probably get tired and abandon it.

And just to be clear, none of this has anything to do with the timer being shown.

[Expertium]

Ah, ok. That’s an interesting idea. Overall, I like your approach of asking a few simple questions in simple terms while avoiding new terms like “leech” and “sibling”.
@dae, I want to ask: is the idea described by suiyuan above something that you would work on? If having different levels/layouts is something that goes completely against your vision, then there is no point in discussing this further.

[dae]

Not in the near future, but I can’t rule it out for some future time.

[suiyuan]

Now that scheduling information and deck options can be exported, I think it is not that big of an issue. Beginners will mostly be using pre-made decks and they won’t need to go into the settings at all most of the time. Beginners who are going to be making their own notes might as well work with the full settings layout.

However, I still think Anki would benefit of a friendlier configuration. I have been using it (intermittently) for years, and I still struggle to understand many of the concepts. Either I just plainly don’t understand them or their explanations (be it on the manual or the tooltips) or, if I do understand them, I don’t know how to tweak them for my needs. So I end up copying someone’s recommendations or just leaving them as they are.

This is ok. But I do get a feeling of frustration and disconcert at times, tbh.

[Expertium]

I made a survey about two levels/layouts: https://forms.gle/cJmMSkjhsDMEQYRc7
To anyone who is reading this thread, feel free to participate!
I will share the results after 3 days.

[Shigeyuki]

TidyAnkiBear is a prototype add-on I created for almost same purpose as this thread.

• TidyAnkiBear - Select and hide Anki menu bar items (by Shige)

For now, there is only a function to select and hide the home menu.
Further development of this will allow all menus to be hidden step by step.
(e.g. hide the contents of the editor and deck options)

[Expertium]

@dae here are the results:

As you can see, the opinions are split.

I also did a poll on r/Anki regarding adding a starter deck with cards based on the manual:

And there opinions were split too.

I also suggested this and this, and a lot of people didn’t like those ideas, including you.
So either my ideas are junk or people just disagree on literally everything. Either way, I won’t be suggesting UI changes anymore.

[dae]

I appreciate your desire to improve the UI, and there are certainly a lot of room to do that. I just don’t think a global beginner/advanced switch is the best way to tackle the complexity issue.