Chinese Flashcards is an iPhone/iPod application created by the developers at ChineseLearnOnline.com. The interface is extremely straightforward and simple, allowing students of Chinese to review some 2700 most frequently used Chinese characters in either their simplified or traditional form going from the character to its English approximate meaning and pinyin with tone marks. The application provides a graded slideshow broken into fairly compact rounds of study called “sessions” which are components of the whole study environment called a “test.”

Performance in each session is fed into a form of interval study that prompts the user at a later point to review words mistaken. Users can begin any given session again or erase all interval study data and start the “test” again from scratch.

Application Name: Chinese Flashcards
iTunes Application Link: Chinese Flashcards
Version Reviewed: 1.00
Software License: Commercial (about $5)
Review Date: 2009.02.15
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is from the perspective of language learners, and especially those who will be engaged in high-volume and long-term study of vocabulary. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

The website for the application has a very nicely written, complete with images, description of the features of the application which I recommend looking at. Beginning students of Chinese may also want to see the newest application they are offering which focuses on vocabulary rather than individual characters.

The application has one extremely frustrating aspect that I hope will be rectified in future releases: it has extremely slow transitions between cards and card sides. The time taken to produce animation for removing the visual tab covering up the answer and flipping the card is much longer than it takes for users to recognize and offer feedback on already known characters. Some visitors to this site have said they disagree with my complaints about this frequent problem in Mac and iPhone/iPod applications but I think it is a very serious problem for high-volume students and the feature should at least be optional. In my estimates with this application, the time taken to animate the removal of the tab and flip the Chinese character card triples the total study time for 25 already confidently known cards. Given 10-20 minutes of study per day, over a month or several months, this translates into very severe waste of study time lost to viewing animations. This is worse than the lost time I have seen in any other flashcard application on the iPhone/iPod so far. Given most students of language engaging in flashcard study will want to maximize the efficiency of their daily review, this UI problem is crippling and needs to be addressed before it can be recommended for serious students of Chinese.

On the good side, this is one of few applications which recognizes the needs of many students who wish to learn the traditional forms of characters who are studying in Taiwan, or who, for other reasons, wish to master the traditional forms. It also allows students to skip characters and leave them out completely from the loop (but it would be nice to offer the ability to selectively reintroduce them if necessary without restarting the “test” completely).

Although this language targeted flashcard application is priced reasonably for one that includes both content and a form of interval study, it can benefit from some improvements in future versions, in addition to resolving the above critical UI problem:

-Users are left completely in the dark about their interval study performance or about how interval study is carried out on the application, let alone giving them some control over the process. They have no way to tell how far any given card has progressed in the interval study process, or an overview of their study except for a basic summary of a session. This application really could benefit from adopting at least some of my recommendations related to statistics in interval study applications. If you are a user of this application, consider requesting some of these features from the developers.

-While this application has interval study to a certain degree, it suffers from a classic case of The Cookie Monster Flaw. It considers all characters that have been correctly reviewed 4 times as “memorized.” Hopefully this will be addressed in future updates and a more thorough interval study spaced interval system will be implemented that keeps in mind that nothing lives in memory forever.

-The 2700 most frequent characters said to make up about 95% of the characters used in newspapers. But 95% is not as good as it sounds. We think of this as an “A” or even an “A+” but it translates into, by my estimate (confirmed by my own experience over the years), around 10-20 Chinese characters per average page of a Chinese book that are not recognized. Perhaps half of these can probably be inferred from context, that still often results in more than half a dozen characters that need to be looked up, or simply ignored. I would recommend serious students of Chinese to use applications that provide a set of 3500 (or more) Chinese characters.

-Since the application already nicely provides smaller sessions of cards, it would be best if a form of cycle elimination was provided before sending these cards into the distant interval study future. This can dramatically help student performance in the future and prevents them from having to manually start a session over.

If the slow visuals are made optional, the cookie monster flaw is resolved, cycle elimination introduced, and some useful statistics for users are included, this could be a major contender in the flashcard market for students of Chinese wanting to master 2700 characters.

My review below points out many strengths of this application but also points out some issues with the flashcard interface which will frustrate high-volume students, as well as some of the limits of interval study which will concern long-term students.

Application Name: iFlipr
iTunes Application Link: iCards
Version Reviewed: 1.14
Software License: Commercial (about $5)
Review Date: 2009.01.29
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is from the perspective of language learners, and especially those who will be engaged in high-volume and long-term study of vocabulary. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

The iFlipr iPhone/iPod application is complemented with an online flashcard database at iFlipr.com where, with a free account, users can download shared sets (much like StudyStack, iFlash Deck Library, Flashcard Exchange, and other similar services), create and share their own sets, and freely export sets in the CSV format. However, it might be more accurate to say that the website is complemented with an iPhone/iPod application…

A Flashcard Library Browser?

iFlipr is best described as a “client” of the web page, focused on providing an environment in which a user can download cards and practice them on their iPhone/iPod. This approach has some strengths but also may produce frustrations for and ultimately be too limited for the high-volume long-term student of language. With one exception (ironically the “Downloads” pane) all the panes within the application involve interaction with the website and require an internet connection. That means the very UI of the application is deigned with the online interactivity chosen as the primary focus of the user experience within the application. Instead, I believe it would serve the users better, and serve iFlipr’s chances in future competition with other similar applications, if it focused on the study experience itself, which does not require online connectivity.

The “Featured” pane shows you a selection of high quality sets found on the iFlipr online service. The “Recents” pane shows you recently shared sets, the majority of which I found to be of very mixed quality. The lack of a rating system, at least for the time being means that one faces something of a jungle in wading through the online offerings. The third “Search” pane allows you to search for sets to download, while the “More” pane uses a built in browser to load the iFlipr website and provide access to most of its features. These include the ability to create decks, using a somewhat more basic (compared to the excellent desktop browser experience provided by the website), but still solid input interface.

Only the “Downloads” tab is an offline component of the application, listing downloaded sets and allowing you to move into study mode.

The advantage to this approach is easily apparent for any new user to the application. They can easily find and download sets in their field of interest through the excellent interface. They can also, if they have an internet connection, quickly create new sets, or download sets they have created online via the desktop.

However, once you have your flashcard files in the application, however, all of these features become superfluous. Once you have purchased your furniture, you don’t need a whole furniture store camped out in one’s living room, as it were.

I would recommend a complete redesign of the user interface to focus on the study experience. Combine all the online interactivity into one pane of the application. Let users enter that “Online” pane and access all the above mentioned areas such as featured, recent, etc. sets and the ability to interface with the website through the mobile client. That will free up all of these other buttons for greater offline functionality to address some of the problems and missing features mentioned below.

In my interaction with the developer, we seem to have similar views on these issues, and the origins of design of the application are clearer to me after learning that this dates back to the application’s pre-SDK development as a web-based application for the iPhone. I understand that the application is still in a transitional stage and I look forward to seeing how it will change.

Creating and Editing Sets

While it can be done either on the desktop or through the built in browser on the mobile iFlipr client, sets can only be created with an internet connection and, it should be remembered, a functioning iFlipr server. On at least one past occasion, the iFlipr has had connectivity issues, which reminds us that when we become dependent on web services, our data is in the hands of a service provider. In this case it is not a major corporation with dedicated server monitors but a free and well-designed service in the hands of a, for the time being at least, an engaged developer.

One major problem for students of Asian languages or who wish to keep verb conjugation information, etc. in a separate field is that, like Mental Case, iFlipr only supports two fields. Those students will probably want to consider other options like the upcoming iFlash Touch, iAnki, iCards, or other offerings that support three fields or more.

For those who can do with only two fields, however, the browser based set creation is, however, beautifully done. A full WYSIWYG editor is provided in the web based editor which allows you to do a great deal of customization of colors, fonts, sizes, and other formatting.

These translate beautifully once downloaded to iFlipr, putting most competitors to complete shame in this area. You may also add sound and images to your cards. What’s more, through the “Settings” tab, one can customize the font and size displayed on the iPhone and the font sizes are done relative to the size indicated through the set creation editor online.

The built in browser in iFlipr also allows you to create sets, but without the rich editor, which is a wise decision. In both cases, however, it is extremely easy to move to the next card. Like the desktop iFlash application, you can simply tab between fields and it will automatically create new cards when necessary. This is in contrast with the awkward Command-N or Command-Return shortcuts required in Mental Case or Anki desktop clients. Creating, editing, and deleting cards is simply a delight in iFlipr. Its dependence on being online for the creation process, however, will be a problem for students who, and I speak from long years of field experience here, find themselves in a grimy dormitory room or hole-in-the-wall cafe in some foreign country without a (or with a very slow) internet connection and want to type up their vocabulary.

There is no way to organize or move cards between or into multiple sets (decks) though the developer has indicated on the Facebook group for the application that groups and folders are in development. There isn’t even, in fact, any easy way to get an overview of what cards are in a set unless one is editing the set through the web page interface. There should, at least, be a way to get a quick list overview of what cards are inside.

Flashcard Study

The heart of any flashcard application is its flashcard study. For the high-volume long-term student even the smallest issues here can be enough to give an elaborately designed application the toss.

There are some aspects about flashcard study that I hope the developer will give serious consideration too. Flashcard study should be fast, clean, and go easy on the hands. Many of us will be studying a hundred or more cards a day so every little moment and movement counts.

The first problem is the positioning of the buttons. Like many developers to the iPhone/iPod who treat the environment much as it was a desktop environment, they forget that thumb location is key to placement of UI objects. In this case, the very bottom of the screen is the worst location. One must stretch one’s thumb when holding the device with one hand and this repeated motion (over a hundred times, for example) will eventually lead to serious strain. The thumb can reach the upper half of the screen with much greater ease. As I have said in other reviews, the Lima Sky Kanji application approach is good: make the whole card touchable, immediately flipping upon a single tap almost anywhere on the screen. Also, I recommend making a second tap mark the card correct (instead of having to aim one’s thumb at a small check mark) while keeping the “wrong” button as a separate button. As long-term students know, a higher and higher percentage of one’s cards will be marked correct if daily study continues so it should be the default (or easier) choice.

Fortunately, iFlipr does not make the mistake Mental Case does: when marking a card correct or incorrect, it immediately moves to the next card. Well, not actually immediately. There is a slow visual flip animation which ensues. Like I have said in reviewing other applications with this problem, “It was cute the first few times…” but after a few hundred flips it becomes akin to having your computer issue a, once hilarious, barf noise when ejecting a floppy disk (if anyone remembers that craze). This same problem is found in iCards, Mental Case, and some other iPhone/iPod based programs. This seriously slows down flashcard study for high-volume students. At least offer the option of turning these transitions off.

It is also not immediately obvious (until the content is read) what side of a card one is looking at. Mental Case offers a very nice feature of showing a slightly different background shade for each different side. iFlash Touch (at least the current beta version) shows the field name in barely visible text in one corner. Either of these methods, but preferably the first, gives the user immediate visual feedback on what side they are on. This may not seem like a big deal, since one should be able to tell from the text quite quickly what side one is looking at but it can definitely make the study experience more pleasant.

A number of settings are available during flashcard study. Here one can “Reset Mastery Levels,” choose between the graded slideshow and multiple choice approaches to flashcards, of which the former is much better for serious students. They can also choose the order for displaying fields, and whether to use the interval study (Leitner) method or a simple first to last order. It would be best to offer a setting here, perhaps on this very same option, to show the cards simply shuffled. The font and font size percentage (relative to the size set when the card was created) can also be set here in the settings.

This settings window, including the “Keep Practicing” and “Done Practicing” buttons has a very web pagey feel to it, instead of that of an iPhone application but regular buttons. The UI might be improved in future by using more native iPhone controls and following the consistent look of other iPhone applications here.

Also, these settings, might better be placed in the settings for a given set, rather than all crammed in settings available only during actual study. These and many other features, such as more statistics, set management, and various other features that might be added later are good candidates for replacing the currently heavy web-interactivity nature of the panes in the home screen of the application.

Cycle elimination exists only to the extent it is part of the interval study process. Like Kanji Flip, the interval study approach is continuous. One never “completes a round.” In order to give users a degree of in-progress feedback on newly studied material, generally I feel it is best to provide a “debriefing” screen after all newly introduced cards have been introduced showing the user, at the completion of a round, how well they performed in the round, before continuing to remove correct cards from the stack. Anki provides this when scheduled cards are completed. There are ways of doing this right without a traditional cycle elimination, but it depends on the effectiveness of the interval study features. Let us take a look at this in our consideration of interval study in the application.

Interval Study

iFlipr immediately puts itself in the running with the more powerful applications when it chose to incorporate interval study, the availability of which is apparent when one opens the “Settings” and sees the “Leitner” method of flashing there by default.

You can see that interval statistics of a sort are being compiled through the “Card Mastery” number. This increases each time you get a word correct and resets to zero when you get it incorrect. I think reseting the word mastery is a suitable brutal punishment for the forgetful and can probably serve well in most circumstances. However, my personal experience over the years of my own interval study suggests that words that have reached any level higher than 4 or 5 that one gets wrong after many weeks or months without being prompted to review it, recover very quickly and once they have recovered don’t need to be reviewed as frequently as a fresh card at a mastery of 0-3. I thus think an optimal system is one which drops the mastery level by some number (or provides such an option) perhaps arbitrarily set by the user according to their own needs (with a default of a drop of 2 or 1 point of mastery).

The “Deck Mastery” number, which shows the lowest mastery of any card among those in a set is not a useful number and I would recommend replacing it with a more useful statistic (See the stats section of my Basics page for some possible replacements). Words are not all created equal. Not only do we find some more difficult to memorize than others, we also unconsciously prioritize all words we learn according to how useful we deem them to be. The only exception to this is in preparation for a vocabulary examination in which the probability of a given word being tested is equal to that of all other words on a vocab list but the many language programs I have gone through suggests that students quickly learn that this is usually not the case. If my set contains 100 Chinese legal terms, for example, and I have real difficulty in remembering 2 very obscure contract terms that I’ll probably never have any use for, Knowing how well I know (on average, for example) the other 98 of them is far more useful than how much I suck on two words I’ll never use but am too lazy to delete from the list.

The actual algorithm being used is not transparent to the user or even posted on the web page. Interval Study in software applications has been around since Piotr Wozniak designed SuperMemo for DOS in 1987 and I designed Flashcard Wizard for Mac OS 9 in 1999. The maturity of this approach, which all the most powerful applications now include, is such that developers could benefit from exposing their algorithms (at least in general terms) for advanced users of flashcard study to help guide them in their purchasing decisions.

The iFlipr developer Joseph Kumph is, however, open about it and was kind enough to explain to me how it is done in the case of iFlipr:

The algorithm is fairly simple: cards in the deck are broken up into different groups based on their card mastery level, and one of these groups is choosen based on an exponential decay function coupled with a random number generator. Specifically, the cards with the lowest card mastery are the most likely to be choosen. There is also a “ghost” pile, where a card goes immediately after it is marked incorrect, and kept there for about 30 seconds, to make sure the cards are not shown again too quickly.

There are a number of good elements at work here. The use of a “ghost” pile is an excellent advanced feature that will be familiar to Anki and Mnemosyne users. The iFlipr approach also guarantees that for large sets of cards, a user will be more likely to be prompted with unfamiliar words before more well-known ones. However, iFlipr has a very serious case of the Insatibility Flaw since it continually drags out words which are not on the verge of forgetting. I hope that the developer will revisit his interval study approach and develop an algorithm which focuses as much as possible on only prompting those words in need of review (with an optional study on demand feature for crammers).

It doesn’t seem that, as in the case with synching iAnki, Mental Case, or some other powerful iPhone applications, that interval study data is synched with the server. That means if you practice your flashcards directly through the web interface, this study has no connection to whatever progress has been made on the mobile client. Given the tight integration between the mobile iFlipr client and the web page, I find this somewhat unusual.

Other Comments

There are a few UI issues with iFlipr which may be easy to fix. Much of the application feels more like a web page than a native iPhone/iPod application. Double clicking (by mistake) ends up slightly zooming the “page” which shouldn’t happen. The panes should be solid and stick in place, but instead one can often accidently “drag” the page out of position or find it out of position when a new dialog set of options appear:

These are very minor UI problems I think can be addressed without too much difficulty.

It is fantastic that data is completely portable in iFlipr, through its online interface. There is excellent import for CSV and tab-delimited data and it will also export CSV data (without formatting data, except for   for carriage returns).

The support page for the application is essentially through Facebook. Here the Wall shows that the application has some very enthusiastic fans. However, though facebook is popular, contrary to common perception, not everyone on the world is on the site yet. I would recommend providing some support interface or forum outside the environment of Facebook.

Fool’s Final Words

iFlipr is a clean and strong contender in the iPhone/iPod flashcard application market. The web interface is clean, simple, but powerful, and provides an easy way to download one’s data. However, there is too much dependence on the web interface and the client ought best gather the web interactivity options in one place to allow for gradual expansion of other useful features, especially in the realm of set management, study statistics, and so on.

As explained above, biggest issue for long-term students of the application is the Insatiability Flaw in its interval study approach. The biggest problem for high-volume students is the UI of the flashcard study itself. I thus suggest further refinements in the algorithm to eradicate this problem, and possibly provide filters for truant users to easily return to study while prioritizing words with certain tags or at certain interval stages.

The slow visual flip transition is cute the first few times but slows high-volume study significantly. I have also not tested performance of the application with the high-volume sets (3000-8000 words) that students in intensive language programs will want to subject their software to. I was not comforted by suggestions on the support page to keep it to 100 words per set. The lack of full touch-ability for the card and the hard to reach buttons in the bottom of the screen should be given a second luck in future releases.

Finally, support for only two fields will mean that students of Chinese, Japanese, etc. will want to look elsewhere for a more flexibility three+ field solution.

There are some real gems in this application, however. With some improvements here and there to address the issues above, I feel like this application could easily catapult itself to the top of the pack.

Import: Tab-delimited and CSV.
Export: CSV.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: Images and Sound.

Entry Creation: Excellent if two fields are enough.
Entry Editing: Excellent
Set Organization: None.
Flashcard Study: Poor UI, slow
Interval Study: Fair, Insatiability Flaw
Formatting: Excellent
Design and Feel: Fair, could use some improvements
Statistics: Poor

Golden Coxcombs: 6/10 but with great potential…

Below is a review of the iPhone and iPod Touch client that Mental Case has released. The review concludes that, with the exception of highly targeted applications such as Kanji Flip and other Andre Khromov applications, Mental Case for iPhone and iPod is currently one of the strongest offering for interval study on the mobile platform but hopes that certain refinements in the flashcard UI and Wi-fi synching features with the desktop will be made in future releases.Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

Mental Case for iPhone and iPod Touch

Application Name: Flashcard Exchange presents Mental Case
iTunes Application Store Link: Mental Case
Version Reviewed: 2.0.3
Software License: Commercial (about $8, about $5 on sale)
Review Date: 2009.01.27
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Please read my earlier Mental Case review for information about the general approach of this application and more on the OS X desktop client of this flashcard application. Without that background some of the review below may be a bit bewildering as it assumes some familiarity with the desktop application.

The mobile edition of Mental Case offers five tabs which we will consider separately. The application is often slow to start up, but generally loads in between 4-8 seconds of waiting.

The “Cases” tab offers a location where one can add/edit/delete sets (Cases) and add/edit/delete cards. You cannot, however, indicate here that you want to schedule (or edit the schedule) a given case in the “Lesson” (which is the interval study component of the application). This can only be modified on the desktop client. This is frustrating when one has downloaded a new set from the Flashcard Exchange service provided and want to immediately begin studying on the road. The view tells you when the card was last studied, but not any other information about its interval stage, which is puzzling. Overall, however, the editing interface is a pleasure to work with and very well designed.

Through the “Study” tab, one may begin flashcard study. Select the case or the lesson button to begin studying the cards in it, conveniently shown with the total number of cards available to the right. This dives directly into flashcard study which is discussed below. You may also, in this panel, indicate that you wish to reverse the sides of the cards, and/or shuffle the slides being studied.

A third panel offers powerful access to the huge online flashcard database “Flashcard Exchange.” While the online service usually requires a paid subscription, owners of Mental Case may download sets from the service for free. Unfortunately, downloaded sets are not included in the lesson by default and one must synch these cards to the desktop client to set up interval study for the downloaded cards. Flashcard Exchange offers perhaps the largest collection of downloadable flashcard sets online and though the cards are of mixed quality (we will consider this online service directly in a separate review at some later point) the inclusion of this feature is an impressive achievement, goes a long way in helping Mental Case compete with the Deck Library of iFlash, the Pre-made decks of Anki, and the Study Stack integration of gFlashPro.

What are you Synching About?

The fourth “Synch” tab puts the application into a waiting mode where it is ready to receive a synch command from the desktop client. It is very hard to get synch right on iPhones and iPod Touches so first I should say that it is excellent that Mental Case includes the synching feature at all. However, it would be much nicer if the whole synching process was much less convoluted. The developer could arrange automatic synching from the portable device or allow the user to simply open the synch tab and press “Synch” with the actual synch content being determined by a set of preferences on either the device or the desktop client. Instead, the synch process is an extremely slow and sometimes nightmarish, ambiguous, and convoluted process: 1) Go to the synch tab on your iPhone or iPod Touch 2) On the desktop client choose “Synch with iPhone/iPod Touch…” from the File menu (there is no keyboard shortcut, which is annoying if one is to do this every day) 3) A synch window appears with the device name, and three options below including “copy new notes and cases to my Mac,” “Remove notes and cases removed” and “Update notes that were edited” on the iPhone/iPod Touch. However, even after choosing among these options, you are then asked to 4) Select from cases you wish to transfer between the iPhone and iPod touch.

This approach to synch is far too convoluted, time consuming, and does not even speak to the incredible time consuming process of the synch itself, which in my experience crashed occasionally and resulted in duplicate cases or interval study data not getting transferred properly. This is not Mac simplicity at work. Also despite the fact I dealt with no images or sounds, synching a set containing a few hundred cards took far longer than one might suspect, certainly longer than the transmission to the iPod touch of several dozen content filled emails contained in the notes of to-do items being transferred by the GTD application OmniFocus, for example.

However, the basic architecture is in place, and if the user interface experience of the synch is completely rewritten to focus on both the speed and a better user experience, this could be a powerful and useful feature used by long-term students of language. One might start by moving all the options to a preferences pane, or perhaps, if I have downloaded a new case from flashcard exchange on the iPod/iPhone or made a new one myself, Mental Case ought to be smart enough to ask me, “You appear to have a new case on the iPod, do you wish to transfer it to the desktop and include it in future synchs?” Whatever the approach, it must be more intuitive and simple to use than the current one. The issue of the slow transfer speed is perhaps the harder challenge to face but is part of a general slowness of the desktop Mental Case application that I will mention in an update to my review.

Help

Finally, a “Help” pane in the mobile application provides a number of web links to help. It is nice to provide these links, which some iPhone flashcard applications such as Lexicon, StudyCards, leave out altogether, but, unlike the online but in-application help offerings of gFlashPro one is kicked out of the Mental Case application to Safari. Also, like gFlashPro’s help offerings it is only accessible with an internet connection. This contrasts poorly with the excellent in-application help of Kanji Flip and other Andre Khromov applications which serves an excellent model to other developers. These help files can be small and there is no reason not to embed them in the application.

Flashcard Study on the iPhone/iPod Touch

Mental Case gives you a nice clean graded slideshow flashcard experience. Studying from the “Lesson” uses the interval study approach found in the desktop, but, unfortunately, the lack of any way to view interval study statistics on the mobile client leaves the user somewhat in the dark until they synch with their desktop. Flashcards can be beautifully shown in landscape or portrait modes and the font is large and clean. Formatting of the font and size can be done in the settings of the application accessible in the general settings of one’s iPhone or iPod Touch (there is greater control over card formatting on the mobile edition than on the desktop client!). One nice feature is that the background of the card can be slightly different in color so that one recognizes what side of the card one is looking at immediately. This is a wonderful approach that other flashcard developers might consider.

It is absolutely essential to get the flashcard environment right, however, since this is where the user will spend the vast majority of their time when studying. I quickly found myself frustrated and annoyed by the flashcard graded slideshow of the application and I don’t think I could tolerate using the application in the long term for two reasons:

1) Like a number of other iPhone/iPod flashcard applications such as StudyCards and Lexicon, the transitions are way too slow. The flip takes way too much time and the slide is also slow. One can marvel in the beauty of the visual effect the first few times, but after a few hundred flips and swipes it gets really annoying. There needs to be a way to turn these annoying transitions off. The time it takes really adds up over time and it is a very noticeable contrast with the lightning speed of the swipes of Lima Sky’s Kanji, and the immediate transitions of Kanji Flip.

2) When I mark a given word correct or incorrect in Mental Case, I must sit and continue to stare at the card until Mental Case has “timed out” for a card and either flips or moves to the next card. Mental Case thinks it knows what is good for me. When I tell it I don’t know a word or that I know a word, it takes its sweet time. This was so annoying I immediately abandoned use of the application. I want to be in charge and I want flashcard applications to do my bidding. My feeling is that if I’m too stupid to give a card its due consideration, that is my problem. The default behavior (or at least an option should be provided) should be that marking a card correct/incorrect either a) shows the answer or b) moves to the next card immediately depending on context. However, I don’t know if the developer will be changing this any time soon since we have agreed to disagree on this issue. The developer, Drew McCormack, who is always willing to hear from users about ways to improve the application stands form on this issue and defends his approach with this explanation:

We thought about this a lot when we did it. Should the card stay on the screen. We concluded that it should: for a start, you may know immediately it is wrong, but want to study/think about it before going on. Also, what if you mark it wrong, and then rethink, and decide that actually you knew it well enough. There is a value judgement there, and the user should have a chance to back out (undo). So I like the way Mental Case does it, and dislike the approach of other apps.

I hope that the developer will reconsider. In fact, I would recommend that most flashcard applications consider the following approach, which in over a decade of studying four languages with flashcard software, I strongly believe to be the most efficient for high-volume and long-term study: When showing one side of a card a tap anywhere should show the other side (with the remaining fields or the next field if a three-step card option is available). A second tap (or click on a desktop) should mark the card correct and move immediately to the next card. There should be a button somewhere on the screen that allows the user to mark the card incorrect but it might be located in a corner so that the “correct” surface dominates the screen. Over time, users will get more and more words correct and will want to give each card less and less consideration unless it “drops” from memory. The UI ought to take this evolution into account and also keep high-volume users in mind.

It would also be nice if the buttons for correct and incorrect were not at the base of the screen, a common UI mistake of developers that leads to strain for high-volume users. When holding an iPhone/iPod Touch, the user’s thumb can more easily reach the upper half of the screen but must stretch their thumb further to reach the lower portion of the screen while balancing the device more precariously.

Overall, however, Mental Case for iPhone and iPod Touch currently leads the pack as the strongest interval study offering in a general flashcard application. Dedicated students of specific languages (especially Kanji characters in Japanese) may prefer the equally powerful but more targeted approach of Andre Khromov’s applications such as Kanji Flip but until iFlash Touch comes out of beta, the only other major competitor on the iPhone or iPod Touch with this kind of interval study features is found in iAnki, which comes nowhere near Mental Case as a full iPhone/iPod Touch client application.

Import: Wi-Fi synch
Export: Wi-Fi synch
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: Full Media support

Entry Creation: Good, but only two fields
Entry Editing: Good
Set Organization: Can create, modify and delete sets.
Flashcard Study: Fair, Cycle elimination but slow transitions and must wait to “time out” between cards.
Interval Study: Good, but finite number of stages, cannot schedule cases for inclusion on the mobile edition, only on the desktop client.
Formatting: Excellent. Both font and size can be customized
Design and Feel: Good
Statistics: Poor

Golden Coxcombs: 7/10 Powerful but flashcard UI eventually annoying for regular users. Possibly the best current interval study offering for this mobile platform.

Updated Review Comments on Mental Case 1.4.3 for the Desktop

I want to add some comments to complement my review of the desktop version of Mental Case which can be found in the next posting.

The installation of iCards comes pre-loaded with Japanese vocabulary (JLPT) and Japanese Kanji character cards (常用漢字 grades) but allows you to and manage new sets.

While this very reasonably priced application has a number of great standard features, serious students of language should probably consider some of the somewhat more expensive alternatives available. The lack of cycle elimination is especially problematic, while the lack of interval study, or reversal of field order compares poorly with other competing applications. The user interface during card study also could benefit from some further improvement.

Application Name: iCards
iTunes Application Link: iCards
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Software License: Commercial (about $1)
Review Date: 2009.01.27
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

This graded slideshow flashcard application comes pre-installed with vocabulary and kanji flashcards, students of the Japanese language can immediately use it for their study. Other users will have to add their own cards.

Sets of cards can be created, deleted, and studied in an easy to use and familiar flashcard application environment. All sets are available directly from the home view. All cards, which can also be easily edited and deleted, come with three fields, which is useful for Asian languages or students who want additional data on their cards. Users needing only two fields need only leave one of the fields blank and iCards will recognize the fact and size the fonts of the two fields accordingly during study.

Study of the cards can be randomized, but the order of the sides shown cannot be likewise randomized.

There is the option to choose between four different “card flip modes” which give the option of showing only one, two or all three sides. Strangely, however, there doesn’t seem to be a way to determine which of the three sides one wants to start with. Thus, if one ones to study from English to Japanese, for example, that option does not seem available. That is an unusual omission and a more important feature than allowing users to optionally show the second and third fields at first showing of a card.

Flashcard study on the application is accomplished by finger swiping through the cards and marking them correct or incorrect. The correct/incorrect buttons are very small and located in the bottom of the screen, which is a bad stretch for the thumb when holding the iPhone/iPod. This makes any major use of the application a strain on the hand. Also, three other interface issues that might be noted is 1) the unusually large and distracting check mark that covers almost the whole card on those cards previously marked correct. This could be made less distracting. 2) In order to create the visual sensation that one is looking at a physical card, and in order to show off a reflection of that card as eye candy, the card is far smaller than the iPod/iPhone screen itself. This is a perfect example of eye candy that harms an application, a major complaint of many the reviews of application by this Fool. On what is already a small screen, information must be crammed into a tiny space in order to create a completely useless visual illusion. 3) There are far too many motions at work. When a user marks a word correct, they expect to move on immediately to the next card. They don’t want to sit and stare at the same card and its newly arrived massive check watermark. This application has 4 different motions in card, which I believe is unnecessary: tap to switch card sides, swipe to move between card, and the two buttons. It should be possible to design it so that marking a card correct does the same as swiping, marking the word incorrect shows the other sides of the card as if one tapped, for example. As it is, the user must do a variety of actions that slows down the flashcard experience.

The most disappointing absence in this application that is a must have feature of any flashcard application is cycle elimination. When you complete a set of cards, nothing happens. It does not, as all good flashcard applications, should, continue to flash through cards that were marked incorrect (or even more efficiently: simply not marked correct). When you begin study do have the option of reviewing only cards that have not yet been marked, but that is not really the same thing as cycle elimination since you have to exit the review process and begin again in order to carry this out and are not given statistics on your current “round.” Remember how a user flashes through flashcards before there was any software: they put aside cards that they know (or alternatively, that they don’t know) and then continue reviewing their cards until they get them all right. Going through the cards only once only tells you what you know and what you don’t know, and doesn’t help you memorize those which you don’t. I hope iCards will introduce this absolutely essential basic feature in future releases.

There is also no interval study in iCards. Also, there is no way to export, import, or synch cards with one’s desktop. It is unlikely that users will want to create large size sets on the iPhone/iPod tap interface so many users will come to miss such a feature. However, given the very reasonable price, this can’t be expected.

With some improvements in the UI and the introduction of cycle elimination iCards can be an excellent contender for its price range. For students of Japanese, for example, such an improved version can provide an immediate and cheaper alternative to more powerful and effective software that includes interval study such as Kanji Flip. It is very reasonably priced and overall has a pleasant design so I hope to see improvements in the future that increase its competitiveness.

Some images below:

Home view:

Card View:

Set View:

Import: None.
Export: None.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: None.

Entry Creation: Good, but fixed at three fields.
Entry Editing: Good
Set Organization: Can create, modify and delete sets.
Flashcard Study: Poor, no cycle elimination, no statistics while studying, poor UI
Interval Study: None
Formatting: No customization possible
Design and Feel: Average, flashcard screen too small
Statistics: Poor. Shows currently number of correctly marked words in the set view only.

Golden Coxcombs: 5/10 Decent for its price range.

While the feature range is narrowly restricted to serve its primary task, this enables Kanji Flip to do the one thing it sets out to do admirably: help you memorize over two thousand Japanese characters. It is somewhat more expensive than other offerings, could benefit from some minor improvements, but given its powerful interval study feature, as of this review Kanji Flip is currently the clear leader in iPhone/iPod offerings for students of Japanese characters.

Application Name: Kanji Flip
iTunes Application Store Link: Kanji Flip
Version Reviewed: 1.2
Software License: Commercial (about $6)
Review Date: 2009.01.26
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

Kanji Flip is justly confident in its ability to get you going with kanji characters. Even the icon (which, given its blue on red color is probably the ugliest my iPod touch currently sports) has chosen the character 叡 or えい (C: ruì S:睿), which can mean shrewd, profound, or astute, to declare the wisdom of its approach.

At launch Kanji Flip offers a standard list of sets of characters to study based on those in each of four JLPT levels ranging from 80 characters for level four to 2230 characters for the highest level one. You may also practice the hiragana and katakana syllabaries via a special kana practice zone. Finally, if you wish to add your own kanji to the list, in the unlikely event that the most commonly used 2230 characters are not enough, you can also add them. There are not, however, any options for set creation or set organization. Given the highly targeted nature of the application, however, this is not essential.

Kanji Flip is, from start to finish, an interval study powered application. Because some users may not be familiar with this style of study it is wonderful that it includes built in help that explains how the process works. However, the exclusive focus on interval study means it offers absolutely no study on demand so students cramming for tests or studying along in a textbook may with to consider other alternatives. You can, however, browse through characters of one of the offered lists if you enable the “browse mode.” Although a very minor issue, the browse mode button is annoyingly “sticky” and requires a swipe of the finger rather than a press, unlike most other switch buttons in the iPhone/iPod interface.

Kanji Flip is built for long term study and there is, in fact (and the developers website acknowledges this) no real reason a self-study student should begin studying one of the lower levels unless one is targeting a particular JLPT examination.

Flashcard Interface

Flashcard study is done in the following way: A kanji is shown and the user taps the “show answer” button or the large white space on the card. Unlike the fully touchable surface of Lima Sky’s “Kanji” application and its “known” button located in the easier to reach upper half of the screen, these buttons in Kanji Flip are all located in the harder to reach bottom of the screen, which is a further stretch for the thumb when holding one’s iphone/ipod. This is hardly noticeable at first, but if one goes through a hundred or more reviews each day, one begins to feel the pain in one’s hands. I hope Kanji Flip will consider making the whole surface touchable to show the answer, and locate the buttons in the easier to reach upper half of the screen. Once you see the answer you can indicate, in true graded slideshow tradition whether you have recognized the character. Unlike some less well designed flashcard applications, Kanji Flip immediately moves to the next card when you have marked it correct or incorrect.

Interval Study

Using an interval study algorithm which is, unfortunately, not made transparent, the Kanji Flip application slowly introduces new characters as you master a small set currently in the cycle. As your memory of the characters improves, the characters very slowly begin moving down through the “Recent”, “Older” and “Ancient” interval stages. This process will seem extremely slow to the user at the start, but I think Khromov has made an excellent algorithm which errs on the side of the conservative: he is pessimistic about our memories and my years of language study show this to be an 叡 approach.

Khromov has also designed Kanji Flip in such a way that you are never finished. You will never “know” all the kanji and be able to call your task complete. Kanji Flip will forever drag out the oldest characters for you to review. This is an absolute key and basic principle of long term language study that is sorely missed by even the biggest commercial software developers who are ignorant of this basic fact. As the developer wisely puts it in his website FAQ:

“Please realize that the goal of learning (and this program) is to continually strengthen your mind. There is no such thing as “finished”. The kanji in a set will never all pile up in the Ancient area. After you exhaust all the untested kanji, the oldest previously tested kanji will be put back into testing rotation – even if you answer it correctly. This is done on purpose.”

I do think, however, that the algorithm can benefit from some kind of date tracking. While the application should never conclude that the user is done forever with the task of learning characters, it is not necessary to drag out characters before they are likely to be forgotten. For example: If I have a word which finally reaches the “ancient” category and has been reviewed over two dozen times (say), then, the following day, if there are no other words “up” for review, it isn’t necessary to force me to review that card which has just recently reached the “ancient” category. I might use that time to practice other cards or other languages in another flashcard program, for example. Since Kanji Flip is not a general use flashcard application it cannot assume users are only learning its material in the way other general flashcard programs, where you can practice a large variety of information, may be more justified in assuming. A word in the “ancient” category can probably go several weeks without being forgotten – weeks during which my time is better dedicated to learning new information, say working with Khromov’s Japanese or Russian vocabulary applications instead. Thus, while the developer is completely correct in maintaining that we never permanently know any words, it is also not the case that, at any given time, we necessary have forgotten any individual character.

A solid interval study implementation keeps in mind the time-to-forget (TTF) for any given unit of knowledge and, ideally, does not prompt you to review a word until it has nearly reached the threshold of that TTF, as calculated by whatever algorithm chosen by the developer (and ideally tweaked with some input from the user based on their own experience and strength of memory). This allows students to make maximum efficient use of their study time, especially when a large percentage of target knowledge is at a distant TTF and they wish to focus on new material elsewhere.

It is not clear to me the exact interval study method being implemented, but my testing so far shows that every half dozen or so correctly marked characters will result in one new character being introduced. Poor performance is brutally punished with a high repetition rate, and that is as it should be. Given the fact the program clearly is doing a lot of tracking, I would very much like to see greater transparency in future versions by offering the user a way to inspect certain statistics of study that are clearly being tracked (e.g. total reviews for a card, total marks correct, incorrect, and a more precise indication of card progress). The colorful “progress” table at the right is useful but large and sometimes distracting. I would recommend the following improvement for future reviews: Allow this area to be blank, so there is no distraction, but allow a tap to toggle between the progress table, and specific data on the currently viewed card, and then back to blank. Otherwise, I find myself too often looking over at the progress table instead of concentrating on the card at hand.

Supplemental Vocabulary

There is vocabulary attached to each character, which is excellent. There are two possible improvements that might be considered for future development: 1) Using a method similar to Lima Sky’s “Kanji” application show the example vocabulary before the answer has been shown, but hide their pronunciation and definition, only to be shown when prompted for the answer. That way a user can easily practice vocab along with the kanji. 2) Many Japanese kanji have verbs or adjectives based on the kun-yomi reading of the character. While the kun-yomi readings are shown for each character, too often the definitions for these kun-yomi words (sometimes quite obscure) are not included among the example words. Many kanji textbooks use a method I recommend: among the example words, include the most frequently used kun-yomi word.

Other Comments

In the realm of statistics, Kanji Flip is great in that it shows you not only the current number of words in each of its general interval stage categories, but also the percentage of words answered correctly in any given study session. However, as noted above, it would be nice in future updates to have a little more of an overview of individual card statistics or overall study statistics in some location.

While it is understandable that synch or update/export options are not available in this highly target application, this does leave the user feeling very vulnerable. Learning or reviewing over two thousand characters can take several months or more than a year of almost daily study. The possibility of data loss or other problems with one’s iPod/iPhone are real, and I think all strong data-intensive (in this case, the data being about one’s study in the form of interval statistics) applications should offer some way to back up the data (beyond the standard iTunes backup of the entire device) either by wi-fi synch or email. Given the highly professional nature of this excellent application and its potential for intensive long-term use, I hope that the developer will consider offering such a capability in future.

My comments above should largely be seen as recommendations to make an already strong application stronger, and I believe much of what is said here is equally applicable to some of Khromov’s other flashcard application offerings. Kanji Flip is way ahead of its competition for kanji study software. I hope the developer continues to strengthen its features in order to maintain its solid lead.

Import: None.
Export: None.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: None.

Entry Creation: Can add kanji to the
Entry Editing: None
Set Organization: None
Flashcard Study: Excellent
Interval Study: Excellent 4 level system, very conservative, but no transparency at the level of individual characters
Formatting: No customization possible.
Design and Feel: Good, progress window a bit distracting, icon is nasty looking.
Statistics: Good, session average shown and overall interval progress indicated.

Golden Coxcombs: 9/10 Currently the top of its class.

Kanji is a Japanese language flashcard application for the iPhone and iPod touch that offers the graded slideshow method of study. It offers the ability to study with cards in random order and create custom lists of Japanese kanji to study from.

Many of the kanji cards provided by the application come with a selection of Japanese vocabulary compounds that can be studied alongside the Kanji characters themselves.

The application by Lima Sky is highly targeted to Kanji learners and performs its task quite well. It provides excellent cycle elimination, the ability to create custom lists of Kanji, and its inclusion of vocabulary adds to its usefulness. Though it lacks interval study feature and there are some areas for improvement mentioned below, this is an excellent offering for its price range.

Application Name: Kanji
iTunes Application Store Link: Kanji
Version Reviewed: 1.4
Software License: Commercial (about $3 or on sale for about $1)
Review Date: 2009.01.25
OS Tested: iPod Touch 2.2

Note: This review is primarily from the perspective of language learners. See the Terms page for an explanation of the technical terms used in these reviews. See the Basics page for a list of basic features found in flashcard applications useful to language learners.

This graded slideshow flashcard application comes pre-installed with Japanese kanji and vocabulary flashcards (from KANJIDIC and EDICT databases) and students of the Japanese language can immediately use it for their study.

While earlier versions only allowed study of four previously fixed sets based on levels of the JLPT test, you may now create custom sets of kanji that you want to study. Unfortunately, creating such sets can be time consuming given how hard it is to find kanji you may wish to study since you must scroll through a long list of kanji to find those you might want to add. There is no index by pronunciation or ability to search for character by inputting them oneself so the benefit of this feature is minimal. The developer has indicated that a more elegant and simple to use searchable index is in the works.

When studying the flashcards the kanji is displayed along with, in many cases, a few vocabulary items that use the kanji. According to the developer, an upcoming update will add supplementary vocabulary for all characters. Their kana pronunciation and English meanings are hidden at first viewing. When almost any area of the card is tapped, the kana and English for the card is displayed. You may then swipe to the next card, or tap a small check mark in the top right of the card.

The location of the small check mark in the upper right of the screen, where it is easy to reach, is excellent, since the developer did not, like many others, place it in the harder to reach nether region of bottom of the screen. However, the check mark to indicate that a card is known is way too small and a blundering thumb must aim well to hit it. The developer has indicated that this will be addressed with a larger area of sensitivity for the “known” button in an update due to come out soon. Also, there is no reason to continue displaying the card after a card has been marked correct, and the number of gestures in a long study session can be significantly reduced if marking a card correct moded it automatically to the next card. I also hope future versions will consider adding this.

Unlike some other offerings in the price range, this application offers excellent cycle elimination. When a series of cards are completed, statistics are displayed and the user is given the option to continue studying the cards that have not yet been mastered. This might even be made even faster and more efficient if, without pressing a button, an additional swipe past the statistics screen immediately proceeded to display the un-mastered cards (since it usually takes many rounds to get through a set of cards and dwindle them down to nothing).

There is no interval study offered for this application, so serious students of Kanji may wish to consider the powerful Kanji Flip application but given the very reasonable price, this hard-to-program additional feature is an unreasonable expectation. However, I am in fact optimistic that Lima Sky is considering such a move in future development. There are also no export/import or synch options to combine with desktop study but that is also beyond what one can expect for an application of this price.

If the check mark is significantly increased in size, lookup of characters for the creation of custom kanji sets made more simple, this would be a leading offering for its price class.

Some images below:

Adding kanji to a custom list:

Card view:

Completion of a study round:

Home view:

Import: None.
Export: None.
Non-Roman Scripts: No problem
Modes of Study: Graded Slideshow
Media and Frills: None.

Entry Creation: None
Entry Editing: None
Set Organization: Can create, modify and delete sets. However, difficult to find kanji characters one might want to add.
Flashcard Study: Good, but needs a larger check mark to indicate known cards.
Interval Study: None
Formatting: No customization possible
Design and Feel: Good, simple, clean, and fast.
Statistics: Decent, shows the statistics upon the completion of a round but not during study.

Golden Coxcombs: 8/10 Excellent for its price range.