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New Dashboard: What Features would users like?

ChinesePod Website Feature Requests
#15

I found some old features in your website, that it didnt notice before.
There are really many entry points into content in different places on the web site.
A bit confusing.

There is the filter function on the dashboard. This one i used intuitively the last year.
There is the “lesson library” tab on the top
Here is also the “playlist” site with different interesting search options.
Here is even the “list” function that allows me to get to content from different years (with acceptable comfort).
There is “my courses” below the profile menu.

Interesting features for experts and probably a lot legacy stuff over 12 years of chinesepod.

Is there any plan of consolidating search features into one place?

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#16

You’ve stumbled upon the main problem facing ChinesePod. 12 years of a hand built website makes for a tricky time navigating and updating without breaking things. We are working on a large project to overhaul most aspects of the website, and search is top on our priorities.

Regarding your search for all elementary lessons, I think the List function is the fastest method.

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#17

How could a great resource be even better? I’d like custom reviews from lessons. I’m hoping the response to this is “It’s right there, silly.” haha Right now I export the words to pleco and review in there. But it’d be nice if I could build a test similar to the placement tests but that pulled exclusively from studied lessons.

Also, is there a scheduling feature anywhere? Like, I’d like to study three [intermediate] lessons a day and then they’d add to my podcast feed at three a day. Doing this manually kinda gets hard unless you’re super diligent about marking off the lessons as studied.

Again, great site.

#18

We don’t currently have any scheduling features. The closest thing we have is a custom playlist feature on our Android app that lets you select lessons in your desired order.

We don’t have this feature either. We are in the process of updating the website (a big job) and hope to improve the tests/gamification of it.

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#19

In the Android app I’m able to filter for lessons I have bookmarked and lessons I have completed. It would be really useful to be able exclude lessons I’ve completed or book marked. Hopefully I haven’t just missed this feature.

#20

I also would enjoy being able to filter by host. I usually just put a playlist on shuffle. In this way I recently discovered a Qing Wen combo that I really enjoyed — I think the hosts were Clay, Amber, and Connie. They had a great effortless on-air rapport that had me smiling and giggling right along with them. We all probably have our favorite hosts and teaching styles. I’ve thought for a long time would be kind of extra sweet if it were possible to filter by hosts or make the hosts searchable in some way . There are tons of super relevant lessons to discover with hosts that many of us may not have ever come across. Lilianna anyone? Greg? Pete? Tom? Shanell? Vera? So many different hosts :slight_smile: Filtering by year would also be a nice entry point into the huge collection.

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#21

That feature gets my vote!

Clay and his coffee…:coffee:

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#22

They really crack me up lol and all from just pure audio !

#23

Yes please, just today I thought the same. Sorting by hosts and year would be awesome.

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#24

Agree. Concur. Same here. Putting stuff into the “Self Study” category is fine for a current study list, still sorting with more choices, e.g., hosts, etc. would make my study sessions more effective.

#25

Hi All:

Thanks for this suggestion! I have forwarded this particular request to the IT team who is working on website revamp and design! Admittedly the current filter function is limited, but if you type the instructor name, you should get the lessons given by the named instructor. Just a reminder that over the years, we have instructors who have the same name.

Another feature I have suggested to our IT team is to increase the categories/series and levels to include more different types/levels of lessons. I saw that when we introduced the character series with traditional characters this month, users are negatively surprised because they expect to see simplified characters and not traditional, while a good number of our users are tradition system learners. So I am seeing that our present level/category system is not sufficient to help users to target and effectively search for what they really need.

This is THE time to make your suggestions while the IT team is in the process of designing the website and app. Your suggestion is much appreciated and please don’t stop writing in!

#26

I’d like to be able to make my own playlists or to tag videos for my own use (any sort of grouping system really), so that I can throw some videos or podcasts together and then work my way through them over several sessions and come back later to revise the content. Eg I recently did a search for illness related material as we were covering that in class and found some suitable ones, but I can only bookmark them and then I have to search through all my bookmarked ones to find them.

This feature would also allow me to keep a list of easier material for when I’m a bit tired and harder stuff for when I feel up for a challenge.

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#27

Hello, thanks for writing in, and your suggestion is passed onto the IT team. Currently, our playlist function is quite limited unfortunately…

#28

If there’s a revamped playlist feature, I’d also like to be able to share it. I’ve sometimes seen complaints in comments, and I’ve thought, “I’d love to make a short playlist for that guy of lessons he might like.”

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#29

I’m guessing this has been mentioned, but just in case it hasn’t…

One of the most valuable thing I do on my iPhone, since I have all the dialogues downloaded and organized into iTunes, is have a playlist of only dialogues at each level, from 2008 through 2014. I can then choose a level, then play it on “shuffle” to both review and discover material I had missed.

On the website and/or app, it could work by creating a smart playlist of (1) dialogues only (2) at a certain level(s) (3) with other criteria, such as year or teacher, or maybe even topic.

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#30

“Read and Listen”

To add to my above comment, ChinesePod has many hours of pure dialogue on file, along with the text. I wonder if there’s a way to create a “Reading Practice” function, where you can either create a playlist, or shuffle the dialogues, and at the same time see the text nicely displayed on the screen.

I used to do that with my iPhone by syncing all the dialogues through iTunes, then using Pleco Lyrics Reader to read along with each dialogue. It would be great to have that functionality built-in, rather than ask poddies to download and organize the whole site into iTunes for themselves!

#31

Thanks so much Elijah for this suggestion, and I am going to raise this to the IT team if they hadn’t seen this in the forum. If I am understanding you correctly, you are seeing a possibility to “break down” lesson barriers that keep the materials (text, dialogues, vocab, recording, etc.) apart, such that the CP materials can be more fluently and personally grouped together for personalised learning purpose. This sounds to me a pretty deep change in the IT architecture, but again, I am not an IT person, so I can only try to use my layman language to discuss with the IT team.

#32

I don’t know how much IT change would be involved. It would simply be an added tool that allows you to have a playlist of only the dialogues, and on the screen it would display the text of the dialogue. I’ll see if I can figure out a better way of explaining it.

#33

I’ve made some YouTube videos to show what I do with an iTunes Dialogue MP3 playlist and Pleco. It would be great if something like this was already built into the app, so you wouldn’t have to download and organize all the dialogues on your own first.

In iTunes

When doing a screen capture of Pleco on the iPhone, the built-in screen capture software wouldn’t allow me to capture audio from the Music app, so I had to do it the “old fashioned” way below:

In Pleco

ChinesePod already has a ton of well-scripted and well-acted audio coupled with the text. If the website or app could do something like this without requiring people to download the whole site onto their hard drive, organize the files and build playlists themselves, sync to another device, and use a third-part app to see the lyrics, it would be a great asset.

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#34

As a new user, what I find slightly frustrating about Cpod is the random pattern of the lessons and the lack of a clear pathway. So, anything improving that would be a huge help. For example, a suggested path of progression through the newbie and elementary levels, mentioning which courses and lessons to follow in order. I am using several other resources to learn Chinese, and undoubtedly you have the greatest array of materials, but sadly the lack of structure makes it difficult to make decisions, at least for a beginner. Otherwise, I am very happy and learning a lot.