Well, actually, I guess it’s more like my philosophy about kanji Flow. Basically, I’d like to offer a bit of info about my motivations behind kanji Flow, why it looks the way it does, and what I might do with it in the future.
I made kanji Flow because I’m a student of Japanese and I needed a way to automate my memorization of kanji and vocabulary. Originally, I used a program on my old Windows Pocket PDA called Stackz. When I switched over to an iPhone, I wanted to keep using Stackz since I had already put so much time into my Stackz study decks. However, the developer of Stackz, MindDate Software, never made a version for iPhone. I actually communicated with the people (guy?) at MindDate quite a few times about a possible iPhone version but, in the end, they said it wasn’t going to happen. I looked for other options in the App Store but there didn’t seem to be anything good available so I decided to try and make something for myself.
I kind of copied the basic UI from Stackz which was okay for me but actually doesn’t seem to be terribly intuitive for new users. I’ve gotten complaints about it, usually along the lines of, “What am I supposed to do with this?” so I know I should probably try to come up with something better but, basically, it works. Those buttons are Leitner stacks, by the way. Honestly, I wasn’t very good at setting up UI stuff when I was getting started with iOS development and it took a long time to get working so, as long as it keeps working and unless someone sends me a really good idea, I’m probably just going to leave it.
kanji Flow is not a commercial product. It’s just something I do in my spare time, again, because it helps with my Japanese studies. I also include data from some open source or creative commons projects as well as featuring integration with a couple of free or free to use resources so I feel it’s best to make this app available to other users for free as well. If other people find it useful and it helps with their Japanese studies, that’s good enough for me.
I still use the app myself every day and I don’t foresee my Japanese studies ending anytime soon so I intend to keep updating the app to ensure it works with all future version of iOS. If other people have good ideas that aren’t too complicated or beyond my skills or available time resources to implement, I’m happy to add stuff to the app for anyone that asks. However, there are some features I’ve received requests for that I probably won’t ever add to the app. I’m going to address a couple of those features in the next post.
Happy Studies!