I started out deciding I would never bother learning the Chinese characters and only focus on speech and listening.

But eventually I hit a point where I started to get a strong desire to learn them. I got really curious about them, and wanted to be able to read signs and menus. So I spent a year getting my reading skills up to about the same level as my listening/speaking.

I think that was a nice way to do it. Learning to read helps with listening/speaking skills too, but it's way too daunting to try to learn chinese characters until you can actually speak.

Thanks for the tip for the app. I used Memrise myself.