I think I’ll volunteer.
I’m happy with how Clozemaster currently is, and reading “it’s a pretty significant shift from the current workflow” rings my alarm bells. But come to think of it, I’ll admit that there’s no need to provide the user a way to change the play settings before every single round.
the vast majority of users rarely change their play settings after their initial setup even though we ask them at the start of every single play session.
I’m one of those who rarely change their Play options because there’s simply no reason to. After all, why would I change the settings when I’ve already found the configuration that works best for me?
With one exception: Sometimes, when I’m out and about, waiting for the bus to arrive, or on mobile, lying in bed, I’ll switch from “Text Input” to “Multiple Choice”, because I don’t have a proper keyboard at hand. And I’m glad that this option is presented accessibly before each round instead of being buried somewhere in a settings menu. More on that in a second. (Because the various different setting menus are the one thing I find confusing about Clozemaster, and I always need a while to find the particular setting I’m looking for, between all the different settings menus that are accessible only from within a round or only outside of a round.)
But I never change “Sentences per round” to anything else than 100 and I basically never play anything else than “Vocabulary”. So this entire window could probably be removed. It doesn’t need to be displayed before every single round, forcing me to make two clicks to start a session: One to click “PLAY” on the homepage and another click on “PLAY” to confirm. One click would suffice to start a round if the option to choose between “Multiple Choice” and “Text Input” were to be moved to a global setting easily accessible on the homepage. Something like this:
After all, I rarely change this setting (“Text Input” or “Multiple Choice”) between rounds of 100 sentences but only between sessions. For example: Yesterday evening I was on my desktop computer with a proper keyboard and thus played “Text Input”. But today, while commuting to work, I’m standing at the bus station, without a keyboard, and will play “Multiple Choice”. The next round of 100 sentences will also be “Multiple Choice” because I still won’t have a proper keyboard. No need to ask me again, before each round. In the evening, when I’m home again, at my desktop computer, I’ll switch to “Text Input” again and use “Text Input” for the rest of the day. Placing the setting like in my suggestion would absolutely suffice, and would allow to get rid entirely of the pop-up window shown in the first screenshot.
And I also don’t play 1 round of “Vocabulary”, then 2 rounds of “Listening”, then 1 round of “Vocabulary” again, then 1 round of “Listening” again and next 1 round of “Vocabulary” again. I don’t need to be able to change that setting before every single round. Much more realistically is that I play 5 rounds of “Vocabulary” in a row, and then 3 rounds of “Listening” in a row. The setting usually doesn’t change between consecutive rounds. But placing that setting also on the already crowded homepage would probably only add to the confusion for users who are new to Clozemaster. Without a strong vocabulary, it’s too early to practice listening or speaking skills, so a person new to Clozemaster would only be playing “Vocabulary” mode anyway and presenting them the option to change that on the already crowded homepage would be information overload. Figuring out where to best place that setting would require more thinking time.
We also get regular feedback that users don’t know how much to do or how to use the app.
This is what has me worried. I myself think Clozemaster is not particularly difficult to use as it currently is. I don’t get what people find so hard about using it. You click either “Play” or “Review”, specify how many sentences you want to see and whether you want “Multiple Choice” or “Text Input”, and that’s it. In that limited context that isn’t so crowded as the homepage, the question whether you want to play “Vocabulary”, “Listening” or “Speaking” should be self-explanatory. Nonetheless, you could eliminate that entire window shown in the first screenshot and then the only possibly confusing element remaining would be the difference between “Play” and “Review”. I don’t get what’s so hard about that, and “it’s a pretty significant shift from the current workflow” rings my alarm bells. I also never see forum posts like “Clozemaster is too hard to use”. So I assume that the people finding Clozemaster too hard to use are outliers—a minority—and the current flow works just fine for the silent majority. But that’s the problem about the majority being silent: The voices of the outliers receive disproportionate weight.
By trying to accommodate the most illiterate person in the room instead of assuming some basic literacy and treating outliers for what they are—outliers—I fear the experience can only get worse for the 99% who aren’t outliers after skewing the experience towards the outliers. Thus I volunteer. But again, I admit that the way to get started playing can be improved. And that it isn’t bad per se to introduce some changes. Out of habit I had never thought about changing the window shown in the first screenshot, and my suggestions in this post are what I came up with after just 1 minute of thinking about the problem, and I think they would already be an improvement.
I encourage other experienced members of this forum to also volunteer to provide the developers with some guardrails against worsening the experience for the content and silent 99% by trying to accommodate the illiterate 1%.
And instead of asking for the number of sentences upfront, a number most people will never change anyway, you could ask after each round. As in, “Now that you just played x sentences, you might find x too long/short. Here’s a quick way to adjust the setting.” Asking after a round rather than before the round should make it more intuitive for users who don’t know how many sentences to play, to find the setting that suits them best.
I’m now curious how a “pretty significant shift from the current workflow” would look like, and why we need to shift away pretty significantly from the current workflow, when my two simple suggestions should already be a good improvement.
Edit: Ahh, I overlooked the following. That means I’m out. 
I don’t use Clozemaster’s apps. I use GrapheneOS on my phone and don’t install apps that aren’t provided as APK outside of Google’s Play Store.
Users who use Android or iOS (the feature will be tested on mobile not web)
What’s the new feature?
Who are we looking for?
How to join the beta?
