Hi all!
In the interest of a clean and lean interface that makes the software more accessible to newbies, I suggest eliminating streaks and the features associated with it, like the bit in the attached screenshot
What do you think?
Cheers,
Mark
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In my personal experience, and also proven by research, streaks are effective for motivating users to come back and practice some more. That’s why almost all educational software has them. I wouldn’t want them removed.
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Supporting what Anna said, I find them to be very motivating myself.
There is a setting to alter their visibility within the reading interface which you can alter in the sidebar “AA” tab:
If I get more negative feedback on this I might consider an option to remove streaks throughout the app for premium users only.
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Thanks Anna, I totally understand I may be in the minority here haha.
I stopped using Duolingo partly because of the gamification style (but also because working with texts seems far more effective for me than working with individual disconnected sentences.)
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Thanks Steve, really appreciate how you’re trying to collect feedback here.
Keep it up, Readlang is great and giving the likes of LingQ a run for their money!
Mark
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TLDR: I’m grumpy about duolingo
Once upon a very long time, duolingo started as an app for collaborative translating with the hope of using the resulting data as training data for machine translation. Then they found out that people need to learn the language first before they can meaningfully translate anything, so they added “courses”, with meaningful spaced repetition in place to help users learn effectively. Those were the good days, but then they dropped all the good ideas and replaced them with colourful visualizations of “progress” and infantile characters jumping up and down the screen.
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I like watching the streak number myself (it’s currently at 492 days), though I use Readlang just as much without it.
A possible alternative could be that when you fail to make 500 words in a day you get that warning but it moves to a two- and then three-day rolling average.
e.g.
You forget one day: 0 words, get the warning
Whoops! You read 2000 words, average is now 1000 words. Streak is restored as if it was never broken
Or:
0 words, get the warning
Read 800 words the next day, average is 400 words
Read 1000 words the next day, average is 600 words. Streak is restored as if it was never broken
Sometimes people will have to drive or be on a plane for 20-ish hours so that could be the easiest way to keep it fun but remove a bit of stress about losing the streak.
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That’s a clever idea! Possibly a bit too clever though since it’s more difficult to communicate how this works through the UI. I think there’s value to keeping it conceptually simple.
I agree, that sounds a bit too complex for users to understand right away.
I myself just keep track of my streak myself. I need to do “10 minutes of Readlang” a day, and if I don’t, my counter goes into the minus, but I can catch up whenever I want.
But sure, if the streak helps people, it’s absolutely worth keeping
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I confess I hate streaks . . . because once I start them I super hate stopping. I researched how to drop out of the DuoLingo public competition, and that made me happy. But I couldn’t figure out how to drop out of the “Streak” Skinner-Box. FWIW, I am now on day 758 in DuoLingo, although I “finished” the Spanish course a long time ago. I keep going with the Stories, since I have found that even under the worst circumstances I can review one of the earlier stories, if only to practice simply listening, in about 5 mins.
So, I was really irritated when ReadLang added streaks, cause that sucked me in to doing the classic flashcards (which I found SO irritating/demoralizing, as Steve knows). Sure, I could substitute reading time, but I couldn’t always fit in enough reading, early in the morning before I had to go to work or travel (especially since I still have my other daily good habits to try to keep up).
But the new Blitz has enabled me to get the minimum requistite ReadLang done in just a minute or three, and usually once I start I find it hard to stop. And so … I think I am on day ten or twelve now of reviewing 500 words+ a day via Blitz mode.
And it appears to really be making a huge difference in my ability to listen to intermediate+advanced podcasts, to read at the speak of my Audible recordings . . . and it is beginning to show up in improved sentence construction (because so many of the idiomatic and longer phrases I had in my lookup-deck involve unusual bridging words and, especially, more abstract congugation).
So now I am happy with the addiction of ReadLang Streaks, sometimes doing a couple hundred words at 3AM, when my sleep is interrupted ;-}. At some point maybe I should go “cold turkey” with DL, though. ;-? And what happens when I am completely fluent in reading Spanish? Can I bear that worry?
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I would also like to be able to turn streak off. I just recently quit Duolingo after 1000 days streak and it was such a relief, I hated the app so bad for the last 500 days or so. Streaks turn apps from fun to chores. Now I try to take a day off every week on every learning app I use so that I don’t get trapped in another streak again.
Perfect solution is what Storygraph (reading tracking app like Goodreads) use. They give you option to turn streak off or to set it up the way you want (how many pages read or minutes listened you need to do in a day, two days, three… in a week).
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I think one should be able to turn streak off; I didn’t know that you couldn’t? You can’t know everyone’s situation. If people can’t avoid the “features” they find obnoxious you will likely eventually lose them.
Although I currently leave both the Duolingo and ReadLang streak features on, the day, or extended sabbatical need, will eventually come when that is no longer a good fit for me. If I can’t turn it off – knowing me – I will eventually feel compelled to leave.
IMO, if a person does turn off an existing streak, they shouldn’t necessarily lose their existing streak. An indefinite streak “freeze” would be better, in that it would encourage people to return to consistent practice when their circumstances change – including, perhaps, they pick up a new language.
Just to add one more viewpoint to the thread:
I found that the streak feature motivated me short term, but drove me away when I had to focus all my time and energy on finishing my thesis. This is when I went back to paper books, because they allow me to go at my pace — something I initially also appreciated about readlang.
So I would appreciate the ability to not get warnings about loosing my streak when using it during a period of “intermittent usage”.
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