In this update, the focus was on design to improve your user experience learning Chinese, as that’s always one of our priorities. This design update also is a big step toward getting Ninchanese ready for its release on mobile devices. Here’s what’s new in this design update.

A new and improved selection screen

Ninchanese currently offers Chinese content for levels ranging from complete beginner to advanced.  However, it appeared that this wide range of content and learning material wasn’t visible enough to some users, who tended to stick to the beginner area and not notice they could skip ahead to material that suited their level of Chinese better.
So, to make the different levels in Ninchanese more visible and more easily accessible, we’ve completely redesigned the world selection area.  Now all islands are visible, so you can click on them or slide the islands until you find the world that suits you.

Each world corresponds to a specific level of Ninchanese: World 1 is for newbies in Chinese, i.e., complete beginners in Chinese, World 2 is for elementary Chinese learners, World 3 is for intermediate Chinese learners, and World 4 is for upper-intermediate Mandarin Chinese learners. In addition, we also launched advanced Chinese courses, which are World 5 and 6 of Ninchanese.

Plus, we think it looks prettier, and we think you will too.

A new menu

The left-hand menu in the app was also completely redesigned to be easier to use on mobile devices and to allow you to navigate Ninchanese more easily. This is what it looks like now:

Now, you have all the shortcuts you need in one handy place. In addition, the new menu is light, pleasant, and efficient. Trust us, and You’ll particularly enjoy this new menu when using Ninchanese on mobile devices. Neat-o!

We are paving the way for Ninchanese’s first Mobile App!

We have also gone over most of the pages in Ninchanese to make your browsing experience smoother and more pleasant, especially on mobile devices, such as phones and tablets. There’s still some work needed for some pages, but don’t worry, we’re on it.

Our goal is to go over the pages in Ninchanese and reduce the loading time of the app’s pages. So now, you’ll have a more fluid and generally faster experience learning on Ninchanese, especially when you’re using a mobile device.

Even better yet! This design update paves the way for Ninchanese’s first mobile app,

 What else is new in this design update?

The password reset page has been redesigned. You can now reset your password in style! We’ve also fixed and squashed bugs, as we always do. You guys are excellent at spotting and reporting bugs, and we thank you for that!

We regularly update some aspects of Ninchanese and improve the way your Chinese learning application works. Because we do that pretty regularly, sometimes we don’t write a blog post detailing the changes at the time. But plenty has changed since the last update, which added a whole Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionary to Ninchanese! Things such as:

• Easier access to more information on a stage – now, when you start a new stage, have you noticed you can:
  • Click on See More to see more details on the stage’s content. You’ll be able to see the list of words you’ll be learning or the list of sentences you’ll be learning to put together, speak or understand
  • Read and reread the story as much as you want? Just click on the Read Story button
  • View the lesson, if you’re doing a sentence-building stage with Yocha

• No more “to” – A number of you had told us via feedback and through the Nincha Chat on Slack that having to systematically type “to” before a verb was annoying and counter-productive. So we listened, and no made typing the “to” noncompulsory. So if you want to type “to be called” or ” be called” for 叫, you now can! We’re always happy to make changes, no matter how small, to make your learning experience on Ninchanese more pleasant and intuitive.

How do you like the new changes? We love hearing what you think, like, or believe could be improved, so let us know, either in the app or via the Chat!

See you soon for a new update!

Sarah, a meowsome member of:

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

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Part 1 of the update: Improving your user experience

We pride ourselves on offering you wonderful learners a pleasant and intuitive way to learn Chinese on Ninchanese. In that regards, there are plenty of things we can improve and add to the beta to make your experience learning Chinese as smooth and enjoyable as possible. This is what we worked on:

See more clearly when you get something wrong

We’ve added a little nudge so you can notice better when you’re getting an answer wrong in the vocab stages. What do you think? Sometimes, it’s the little things that make the most difference.

Easier navigation in the app

We’ve added a handy little “next stage” button so you can easily navigate from one stage to the next without having to go back to the home screen each time. It makes moving from Nincha’s vocabulary stages to Yocha’s sentence-building stages to Baimei’s Speaking Stages a breeze. Give it a try!

A change to how our feedback system works

The feedback system has changed! Don’t worry, it remains as easy as ever to use; simply hit the feedback button on the left hand of the screen to send us a feedback message! We love getting feedback from you
What has changed is where your feedback messages go — and where you see the replies. Now, everything is neatly stored in the application, so you’ll simply need to log on to Ninchanese to see if your message was answered.

You can also access the different feedback messages you’ve left and the answers we’ve written to your feedback by going to the Feedback section directly. Enjoy!

Goodbye bugs!

We’ve also squashed a few bugs in Ninchanese:

• Your result screen in Ninchallenges now shows your real usernames, and doesn’t say “Sarah” anymore. Better, right? You can also click on your Ninchallengers’ name
• The notification email will no longer tell you your world rank is #O. We’re sorry about that, we didn’t mean to shame you or anything; it was just a glitch.
• No more 404 errors in the time attacks when you click on “back to selection”; you can navigate time attacks and their leaderboards easily, now!
• And all more little ones, not even worth mentioning anymore now that they’re gone

There’s more coming

A big chunk of our work has also been dedicated to getting Ninchanese ready to give you access to more content – and we’re almost there! Pretty soon, we’ll be giving our users access to worlds 2 and up; it’ll be an exciting step for Ninchanese and our Nincha learners! Our Kickstarter backers are the first to get early access to these worlds (and so can you, by pre-ordering Ninchanese now) and then the worlds will be accessible to our beta users. This will be happening end of October, so get ready for new stages to unlock!

The Nincha Team

Stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Try the best way to learn Chinese today.
Ninchanese is free to use!

Sign up now

The post New beta update! appeared first on Ninchanese.

Improved Vocabulary learning

Some of you Nincha Learners had complained about the repetitive aspect of unlocking new words to learn new vocabulary. Well, guess what? It’s been improved. Dramatically improved.

The way you unlock words is now super personal to you.

We’ve carefully taken apart our learning algorithm – which is based on the Spaced Repetition System by the way. We tell you all about the SRS here – and put it back together in a way that will make your vocabulary learning a lot smoother.

Know that word already really well? The Great Nincha Machine will notice that and quickly move on to the next word to learn.
Having a little trouble memorizing this word? Our Cat-in-the Machine system will give you a little more time with that word, to ensure you fully get acquainted with it.

Ain’t that cool? The Great Nincha Machine now fully adapts to your learning speed and to your memorization skills, so the way you learn new words corresponds exactly to you.
Your needs, your speed. You’re the one learning so that’s only normal.

Waaaaayyy better reviews

A few of you Nincha Learners wrote to me to share their sorrow in having a seemingly endless number of reviews to do each day and no relief in sight. I felt their pain. Our learning system worked but it just wasn’t good enough yet.
Well, this is all in the past, now. Thanks to the Beta, and your numerous feedback, we carefully looked and analysed the data to see where we could improve the system. The Great Nincha Machine’s review system has been completely overhauled and boy, does it rock now!

Now, you review a mix of words you’ve learned. Sometimes it’ll be easy and sometimes it won’t be as easy. Just to keep you on your toes. Don’t worry, though you won’t stay stuck – quite the opposite in fact! The whole process of reviewing the words you’ve learned is now wayyy better and you won’t see your reviews fly by.

Memory levels

Learning vocabulary is all fine and dandy but how do you know whether you really know something? By taking those words out for a spin of course.

Before you do, how about checking if you know that word a little, a lot or really really well? That’s what our new memory level stars are for. They’ll show you where you’re at when learning a word. And if you haven’t practiced this word in a while and it’s starting to slip your memory, your stars will decrease to reflect that.

Ooooh 4 and 5 stars!

Your goal now is to get each word up to 5 stars; which’ll show that you know that word really well. Don’t you love stars? I do. And there’s nothing I love more than keeping them topped up.

My Ninchanese review routine is now the following:

1. Do my reviews. 152 to do today. Woot! They’ll be finished in no time.
2. Play my Ninchallenges. I’ve reviewed all the words I needed, so I’m all revved up to play.
3. Look at the leaderboard: not that I’m gloating, but being in the top 3 is meowsomely pleasant.
4. Browse the words I’ve unlocked and stare at all my beautiful stars. It’s so satisfying to get 5 stars out of 5.
5. Do a cycle of 3 stages: vocabulary, grammar and speaking.

More changes

These changes are not related to vocab learning but here are a few other things we’ve improved:

• Yocha is now the one teaching you how to build sentences  and Baimei the one you’ll purr in Chinese with – Nincha tried to pull one on us and become the master of all the different modes. Nice try, Nincha! We therefore restored Yocha and Baimei to their rightful places. Phew!

• The leaderboards have been completely redone, so you can see in a glance what rank you’re at and who’s the top cat to overpass. They also look a little nicer, don’tcha think?

We hope these changes will help you progress even more on your Chinese learning journey!

Be sure to let us know what you think of them

Sarah and The Nincha Team

Ninchanese combines addictive game mechanics, cute cats and efficient Chinese learning techniques to make learning Chinese a lot of fun! The app is now in beta so sign up now for early access to the beta! Check out our trailer and stay in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and Pinterest.

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