I wish the new illustrations that come with the new Fast Track were more easily viewed, not just after answering a cloze. If you haven’t seen them, some are almost works of art (of the weird kind), and definitely merit more attention. In my view, they could be a selling point, even.
My suggestion is that the illustrations be optionally displayed before answering, and that they can be displayed from search results (if the search index is ever updated to include the Fast Track), and from the session summary.
Furthermore, I wish the illustrations weren’t tied to a particular collection: if I create an entry in a private collection based on an illustrated sentence in the Fast Track, the illustration should be displayed for my entry as well.
I avoided the old FFT for reasons that I’ve discussed in the past and don’t need rehashing here but this piqued my curiosity so I just did a bunch of questions in Italian Fast Track Level 1 and Fast Track Level 2.
I didn’t see any illustrations… until I did.
In maybe 1 out of every 10 questions on average there is an “Illustration” button after answering. The fact that it’s so random as to whether one is there or not makes it really easy to miss. I therefore completely agree with you. It’s an interesting development, but way too easy to bypass, especially if you’re doing navigation entry by keyboard rather than mouse (which I do) and therefore your muscle memory just slams you through into the next question before you realise “Oh wait, that question had an illustr… oh dear, too late.”
Yes, I know… or else I wouldn’t have seen ANY of them. However of the questions in the collections I mentioned, only had a handful with that button present when I played them this morning.
NOW, however, I just did a fresh collection of 20 in Fluency Fast Track level 1… and all 20 of them had the button.
I’m not sure that hitting the button as an afterthought is going to reinforce the sentence in someone’s mind, though. Having it along with the question might, and might help with ambiguous questions (although some of the illustrrations are themselves ambiguous), but after? I’m not so sure.
However of the questions in the collections I mentioned, only had a handful with that button present when I played them this morning.