Being able to write characters was handy whenever I came across documents that needed to be filled, but since leaving China I never had the need to write characters again. I now just input them using pinyin on keyboards, and I can easily recognise and read / input the correct characters. It is a strange feeling trying to write the characters I once knew, but now have forgotten, yet being able to read them instantly...
I would like to recommend dong-chinese, a language app I came across when I prepared for my stay over there. It taught things in a very efficient manner.
At this point I would like to recreationally increase my vocabulary so I have started working on a game called LingoRogue. My goal is to make it addictive to play, with a sneaky vocabulary-increasing effect. In other words a game that is "learnified" rather than a learning software that is gamified.
If we find ourselves saying "we don't know what the user does today" or "we don't know what the user needs in this scenario" we typically reach out to customers and politely ask for a meeting and try to ask questions that only pry at their needs and problems, rather than hinting at our solution.
We also have metrics and opt-in analytics of our services so we can monitor what the customer do with our product as well.
We have UX designers on our team that really really emphasise this type of way of working/thinking and I think it helps us devs understand our customers better, although it can feel slow and annoying at times to keep asking these questions and doing prolonged workshops.