I’ve been using the latest app since it came out. I will start by saying that the SSIW approach is a fantastic way to learn Welsh, in the past I have raved about you to my friends learning Welsh. I have fed back to you many times how successful this could be if you had a high end, high quality app. I REALLY WANT YOU TO SUCCEED!!
However, your app is extremely frustrating from a user point of view. I’ve left very negative feedback on Trustpilot and the Google Play Store, and admittedly it’s quite a negative tone. I’ve been genuinely trying to feedback because from a user point of view, and a user who is VERY keen to use the SSIW method and it’s app, that it is frustrating on a daily basis. So much so that it takes away from the positive experience and often leaves me more stressed than enthused - and that’s not a good way to learn.
A gentleman from SSIW left a reply, and to be honest it didn’t address a single issue I’d raised. Other people will read these comments and it reflects on SSIW.
It’s very frustrating because I just want to see you succeed, and I want to learn Welsh without these bugs on a daily basis. The observations I made are going to be issues for all new users after all. You charge £10 a month and quite frankly the app does not match in quality at that price point. I used to recommend you to every one, but since the new app I have not been able to. Any time anyone has asked about the app I use, they are also put off by the issues and have instead tried other courses available.
The issues are quite simple, and to be honest I’m not sure why they are not standard.
The three biggest issues are:
The app only loads each new phrase as you progress. When your phone loses signal the app hangs and really struggles to find it’s place when reconnected. So going for a walk to learn Welsh just becomes a frustration as you constantly have to wait periods of time, you essentially lose your flow. Solution - let the phone download all content when the app is installed, or large chunks of content as you progress.
When you skip back and fore it appears to skip randomly, not skipping to the previous phrase but instead taking you further than you wanted. This makes it frustrating to find exactly what your looking for. Again, from a users perspective this is highly frustrating and wastes a lot of time, not at all the seamless transition you’d expect from a £10/month app.
Solution - provide a contents table with sub-divisions for each section.
Perhaps the biggest issue is the lack of table of contents. As a user of the app I very much want to revisit some sections, or skip others. As a Welsh learner paying for a course I expect to be able to see the contents of that course, and to navigate to any section I choose. This is pretty standard. Again , for a £10/month app this is a huge hole in the architecture, and sadly it makes the app feel very cheap and poorly constructed.
I am really sorry if the feedback comes across negatively. I have been paying for the app for nearly a year now and lately it’s just becoming more and more frustrating. I keep saying to you over and over that I think the SSIW approach is the best out there, but that you are missing a HUGE market by making a cheap app. I have fed back a number of times over the years because I really do want to see you succeed.
So, two simple solutions -
add a contents and subdivisions so that people can EASILY find the place they’re looking for, and
allow downloads of larger sections of content so the app doesn’t constantly hang in poor signal areas.
I cannot answer your concerns as I’m only a volunteer here, but I’m sure a member of staff will be able to address them.
However, I would like to point out that the subscription is not just for the app. For that £10 you have access to all the online course material (the original ‘old’ course, the newer ‘challenges’ course, and the advanced content), plus Automagic and the new apps in all the languages released (not just Welsh) and also access to the Slack tutoring and conversation group, so it’s much more than a £10/month app.
Thanks for the feedback - good news I think in that what you have said is in progress already…
We are currently moving towards the App being standalone - it is on that journey. At the moment it can cope with a poor signal but not with a bad/ absent one. That is where we are heading.
The way the user navigates through the course is also being changed right now.
That is really good to hear @rich It’s great that you are working towards a standalone app. And I really do get that these things take time in the background. The fact you are moving forward and improving is all I can ask for. I appreciate your reply letting me know about it. I’m so glad as the SSIW approach is the one that has always stood out to me as one of the best ways to learn a language, and be able to actually use it in real life situations.
Ardderchog!
I appreciate what you’re saying @siaronjames, I just think that in this modern age a lot of people expect to be able to use a single app. And an app that works, which it doesn’t. Duolingo is fairly close in price, and users don’t have to navigate between a website and an app, it’s simply how most modern businesses operate these days.
To be honest I just want to learn. I want to access things in one easy place. And I want SSIW to succeed. The fact they are working towards this with updates for the app is a really good sign, I’m looking forward to it
@stephenwells I have no affiliation with SSi and I’ve had all of these issues you describe, I understand your frustration. It’s the only reason I haven’t recommended the app to anyone yet. But I want to ask you to please consider withdrawing your negative reviews, mate, at least temporarily. Just post on here and then wait to see if your concerns are addressed as the app is clearly a work in progress and they have been upfront about that from the beginning. If your concerns aren’t addressed in a month (or whatever you consider a reasonable period of time), you can always repost your negative reviews; but I think you should give them a chance.
I have felt just as frustrated as you at times and I am just a customer like you; but at this early stage, I worry that this kind of review could really hurt the project. I repeat that I have nothing to do with SSi and know none of them personally.
Hello Stephen - can I ask, was this the review that said you had talked to us and received no answers, or no useful answers showing we were interested in your comments?
Would you be able to let me know the details of how you communicated, so that I can follow up on that? I can see no previous feedback from you on the forum. Our staff are passionately supportive of our learners, and it’s very unusual indeed for them not to notice comments or questions.
As Rich has said, we are working very hard on improving consistency and behaviour in-app. Barring the problems with weak/zero connections, it seems to be operating well for most of our thousands of users, but we’ll keep responding to edge cases, and we’ll keep making it better. We currently spend over £16k a month on tech dev, most of which goes on the app, which is more than we can afford, so we are not consciously cutting any corners. Your recommended solutions to some of the issues are good ideas and very much on our list, but I can assure you they are neither simple nor cheap to implement.
I’m afraid we won’t be providing a table of contents, though - it’s at odds with how the methodology works - we need all vocabulary items to be as active as possible for the learner, so content choices based on passive recognition of content will consistently lead people into unsuccessful learning experiences. We believe our process of spaced repetition is the most effective way for our learners to acquire long term memories, and helps people avoid falling into traps of perfectionism.
We understand this approach won’t be desirable for everyone, and we understand when people want to add other approaches to the mix - everyone responds differently to different approaches. We are, though, working on ways to make it easier for intermediate learners to get to useful content, and hope to have some improvements there this year.
Thank you for your input, and thank you for your concern for the project.
Thank you both @rich and @martin-harte, I’m going to reword and readjust the scores on the two reviews I have online. Rich, perfect response, precise and positive. Martin, I really appreciate what you said, and I am going to update my reviews to be more positive. I don’t agree with removing the negative feedback completely, but they need to also reflect the very good things about SSIW, and the App.
Good luck with the app development, sounds really good, I look forward to it
Why not, Stephen? I’ve said I’m very grateful for your feedback and your support for the project, and I’m keen to make sure that if we’ve dropped the ball on answering questions, we figure out why so that we can try to make sure we don’t do it again.
Is there part of that which doesn’t seem friendly and positive to you?
I’m going to add a little bit of my own feedback here - I’ve been using SSiW for a few years now (with some pretty big breaks at times) and I love the system, it works wonders for learning the language and actually retaining information, there’s a wealth of information on the forums and in the Slack, and everyone seems very friendly and willing to engage.
I have switched to using the app over the old downloadable files since it was released, and I very much like being able to read the sentences, which I find helpful. I also love to dip in and out when I have a few free minutes, continuously over the course of the day, which is far easier in the app. I wouldn’t object to a TaC, but I can fully understand and appreciate Aran’s reasoning that it’s against the method, so it hasn’t ruined my day reading one won’t be added.
A bit of negativity - I mentioned on Slack a few months ago that the app doesn’t save your position when you close it, and that is still true for me on Android. It doesn’t take me far away, but it does nearly always bounce me forward, maybe 9 times out of 10. That’s quite frustrating, though it doesn’t hurt to redo a few sentences. It is, however, made more frustrating by the fact that the skip and revisit buttons aren’t entirely predictable - sometimes you’ll move forward or back a sentence, other times it will be more like 5+ minutes. And, if you go too far, then of course you try to adjust, and very quickly you lose your place.
On the whole, I like the app, quite a lot. I like that new languages are being added, and the method in general continues to work well for me. £16k is a lot of money to spend monthly and I have faith that my particular grumble will be sorted eventually… but I would like to hope it’ll be sooner rather than later.
I’ve been using the new App for a few weeks now and am quite happy with it.
Like Greg already mentioned, it’s so much easier to do a bit of learning here and there during the day! Being able to read what’s being said is also very helpful for me, 'cause now I’m able to combine the spoken and the written word(s) in my head and somehow they stick better that way
My successes in the Welsh course encouraged me to have another go at French (which I avoided since my more or less desastrous experiences at school) and so far it’s going really well.
Thank you for offering me the opportunity to tackle French anew in a fun way!
Today I dipped my toe into Japanese and got lost pretty quickly
Still, it’s awesome to be able to learn this language I’ve been fascinated in for ages the SSi way now!
And although I can’t read the japanese characters yet, I love that you decided to use them instead of the latin alphabet.
I’ll figure the characters out eventually.
I’d like to address three points of possible improvements for the app:
First of all, like Greg mentioned, the “revisit” button isn’t very predictable (I didn’t test the “skip” button yet). After getting lost in the japanese course fairly quickly, I pressed the “revisit” button several times in order to start again at the very beginning. Unfortunately, the app stopped going backwards at one point and insisted on that current shown sentence.
How about setting milestones within a lesson which users can switch back to? Those milestones could be the very start of a course and the following “belts” one achieves over time.
Second, the spoken parts of the native speakers sound somewhat tinny at one point or the other. This may be simply due to the quality of my smartphone’s speakers but I want to mention it anyway in case it concerns fellow learners as well.
Third, Aran’s bits and pieces of knowledge in between the course repeat themselves if I switch between languages. For example: I start with Welsh and there comes the part about the comparison between the number of neurons and the number of stars in the universe. Then I switch to French and the next bit of knowledge that follows there is the one about neurons and the universe again.
Please don’t get me wrong, those bits of knowledge are a wonderful treat and greatly appreciated but I would enjoy them even more, if I didn’t get to hear the same one twice in a row.
All in all, I think the app’s a wonderful addition to the SSi World, as it has an appealing design, is easy to use - basically self-explanatory - and offers the opportunity to do a bit of learning whenever it’s convenient
I really like the app and am using it for Cymraeg every day but I’ve hit a patch where every sentence is repeated and tried skipping to see if that corrected it (it didn’t) and then went back to try to refind my place (which seems to have worked eventually) but the repeat problem is still there. It’s a small issue of course but it’s off putting
Is the olds style courses available on the Resouces section on Automagic app? As nothing is showing on the new app and the old app has stopped working on my phone
Okay, if you don’t see “My Languages” that probably means you’ve not used the app to learn Welsh before.
So the first step is actually on the startup page. Choose I want to learn… North or South Welsh, and tap “Find my Course”. Then there should be something for you in the resources.
If that doesn’t work, it’s a job for the tech team, because it definitely should be there!
It’s great that you are working towards a standalone app. And I really do get that these things take time in the background. The fact you are moving forward and improving is all I can ask for. I appreciate your reply letting me know about it. I’m so glad as the SSIW approach is the one that has always stood out to me as one of the best ways to learn a language, and be able to actually use it in real life situations.
