Without more detailI can’t be 100% sure what you’re referring to, but I suspect it would have occurred as part of the technical rebuild I mentioned where on every app we’re building the learning sessions in new technologies. As part of that the visual experience has changed on some elements, this was not the goal of the rebuild (which was load speed, reliability and making easier to build in future). But as part of the rebuild we have to choose how it looks, and because it’s all coded from scratch it’s no more effort to change it slightly in places where we thought there could be improvements.
To make the rebuilds as fast as we can there are certain elements we may have chosen not to rebuild if they’re not used by many people or serve our key goal of helping people learn languages. Sometimes we get that balance wrong and underestimate how important an element is for users so don’t have it in the rebuild initially, and we appreciate the feedback on this forum and the surveys that explain why something is valuable top you. I hope from the web beta learning sessions and dashboard you’ve seen how many suggestions we have taken on board.
Regarding the typing tests, we have quite good evidence for users on web having a stronger preference typing tests compared to mobile users. In app analytics lets us know how many users disable typing in settings, how many use the keyboard button, how many typing tests are skipped etc. And we get many messages telling us how much a user hates typing tests for being ‘boring’ so we try and balance this against the more serious users who appreciate the value of typing.
Of course this is just the ‘average’ user of web and mobile apps, and individuals have different preferences for which we want to allow greater choice in the experience where practical. The rebuilt learning sessions will make such things easier to build.
And thank you for your suggestion on speed review for difficult words. Relatedly I hope you’ve found the ‘mark as’ functionality on the level details screen we added a couple of weeks ago easier to mark multiple words as difficult or to mark them as already known (ignore)?
It’s actually funny that you mention this. I used to use the keyboard all the time. That is, until someone of you guys decided to get rid of storing the “last used means to enter letters”. Back then, I only (on Android) tapped the keyboard icon once which brought up the keyboard and entered my text. When the next question was presented, the keyboard came up automatically. This is no longer the case, which means I have to tap the keyboard button for each and every question. Considering that it takes 1-2s until the keyboard appears, it’s quicker to just type using the set of letters provided.
I wrote about that several times, I even offered to pay (at least for a part of) the development costs! The only means for users to work on DWs is to repeat them several times each in groups of four. I’d rather (speed-) review through all of them until they stick. It’s a personal preference, of course, but I do think “repetition is king”, as often as possible.
Yes, I did of course. It do think it’s actually quite confusing that I can now flag words as “learned” on the level view by tapping the button on the top right, whereas it is “ignoring” words everywhere else. I’d say that “ignore” is the far better denomination of the feature!
In Android app when you have to compose a sentence you have added a glitter/glowing for the chosen elements. I’ve described it my post.
I don’t see what it has to do with “new technologies” and “improvements”. It’s so senseless and distracting I stopped updating your app.
Why don’t you do it properly in the first place? Users are doing half of your work.
Yes, it’s confusing. You could expect that learned words will appear in review sessions, but you don’t have to learn them.
Can I check what the translation is in your native tongues, in English we were going with ‘mark as known’, rather than ‘mark as learnt’, is not that coming through in the translations? The intention being if you ‘know it’ then you wouldn’t want to review it. But if it’s saying mark as ‘learnt’ then I can understand the confusion of you expecting it to fully grow a word rather than ignore.
We’re moving away from ‘ignore’ as our testing showed people found it intimidating whereas ‘mark as known’ people were more confident in using it and we use that terminology already on iOS so wanted to use it on Android and then on web. More widely we’re trying to make it easier to mark as difficult and known, of which adding to level details was one step.
We’re also going to make the way to mark as ignore and difficult from the presentation cards easier, rather than the fiddly triple dot menu.
My point on new technologies and visual design was that if we have to recode the entire learning sessions, then we can implement whatever design we want, without going to incremental effort. In an oversimplified example if there’s a box on a page that used to be blue but we think it would be better red then it’s just as easy to make it red when recoding it. There is no extra effort going into sparkles.
To your question on alphas and using feedback, an alpha in the software industry by definition is always limited, it’s a good way to find out what people value on top of the core experience, rather than spending time building something you don’t know if anyone will use. That’s why the alphas are opt in and for a limited subset of users.
Olaf to your point on keyboard persistence this has been fixed in the rebuilt learning sessions so when they go live i hope you enjoy. Sorry we can’t get it done in the current ones.
It was in Russian, I don’t remember how exactly it was translated, but my thought was that it’s not the Ignore feature, but something new.
Oh my God… Who is intimidated? The same testing bunch of folks who approved Ziggy? How can anyone be intimidated by a short description of a feature? It’s so absurd. “Ignore” is a fine and straightforward word.
Honestly, it’s good that you are trying to explain your decisions, but it all looks as if Memrise as a team has no ideas how to really make this product better. As you can see, you have already created confusion with this small detail, and what about big things?
Is this app for learning languages or for enjoying sparkles and glitter? Do you need to see visial effects while learning? Is it distracting and straining your eyes and attention or something helpful? To put it simply, do you need a hammer with sequins? To me it looks redundant.
Yep, I understand, but mostly users were mentioning things which are lying on the surface. You could have thought about them without anybody’s help. Just an opinion.
I am on German, there it is “Bekannt” instead of “ignorieren” (“known” instead of “ignore”).
That is completely incorrect. Why would you even care to think about changing “ignore” (which is the perfect term whereas “learned” can mean several things, particulary “I already know it but I still want to review it”) and then only change it in one place? That is so typical, don’t you see this yourself?
Great, thanks!
I seem to have been under the wrong impression that this would be fixed on Android. IOW, I was thinking the keyboard would actually be toggled again by tapping the keyboard-button rather than having to be activated after each question. But nothing changed in the latest Android version.
Re-reading this now I notice that you probably meant something else.
So I now I ask myself, what are “the rebuilt learning sessions”? Does this even have to do with the Android app?
Hi Olaf, as I mentioned somewhere above, we are completely rebuilding all the learning sessions in a new technology on all apps, web is pretty much done as you can see in the beta and Android is underway. They’re offering big improvements in loading speed and being in a modern framework will make future changes much easier. It will be a few weeks until the Android ones are released to all users I’m afraid
Why Memrise is doing so many things on the quiet? You could have made release notes with description of this renaming, illuminate users on the changes. I see that other developers are happy to make announcements about new features, but you prefer to do it in the dark. Why? There’s nothing to tell about?
Without typing there is no reason to use memrise
It’s been two months now. You said that this was already fixed, but the behaviour is still the same, IOW, I have to either tap the keyboard-icon or tap into the textbox for every single question to bring up the keyboard. Any info or news on this, @James_g_memrise?
You are absolutely right, that’s very annoying because we definitely did the work. Let me go find out what’s happened, it might have gotten lost in some github merge/conflict debacle.
Okay even worse than a github debacle there was a JIRA debacle which caused confusion.
So right now iOS has a persistent keyboard
On Android the work was done on the rebuild of the learning sessions and not the existing learning sessions which is why you can’t see the change in the app. The good news is that Words and Phrases rebuild will be in this week’s Android release, and that will have a persistent keyboard. Unfortunately Classic Review is still at an earlier stage of being rebuilt but when it’s released will have a persistent keyboard.
As a side note on the web you will have some good news on typing soon.
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Many people who learn a foreign language do this by listening and writing, but now memrise has disabled this feature in a backward and irrational move. If you continue to do this, what is the difference between you and other companies?
Typing tests make up 60% of classic review by default and there is a setting in the settings to make typing tests the priority so they will be given to you wherever possible.
For me, who likes to learn by typing and remind by typing, Mermrise has become meaningless to me. Because it removed this feature for unknown reasons.
Sorry i was not clear.
There is a button in the settings to enable typing by default