About a year ago, we introduced Ziggy to the Memrise universe. The app had evolved and the ranking levels didn’t quite fit the new, space-themed vibe. At the same time, we wanted you to have a more personalised learning buddy, who would motivate and help you progress.
Our designers did a thorough job brainstorming and testing Ziggy with real users, and everything looked good to go. But it didn’t work out.
It was clear there weren’t many Ziggy fans out there – users smashed him in a forum poll. Oh, poor Ziggy! Reddit and Imgur users even proposed new designs to replace our beloved alien.
For now, we’ll keep the same ranking structure. So the points needed to reach a new level, and the individual levels themselves, will remain the same. We’ll be tidying up the visuals while we work on a new system, designed to give you a better feeling about your learning progress.
Ziggy will depart gradually, starting with Memrise on the web and then disappearing from our Android and iOS apps in the coming weeks.
If you know anyone looking for an alien mascot, you can find Ziggy in Covent Garden, entertaining the crowds with language puns.
Aw, now you’ve made me feel bad… Seriously though, great to hear that the feedback’s finally been acted on. Very good news.
For the record, my biggest complaint about Ziggy was how ‘pushy’ the feature was. It replaced user names in the upper-right drop-down box, implying that rather than individuals, we were all “Ziggys”, and worst of all for me, it covered up everyone’s avatars. Many people put a lot of thought into expressing themselves with their avatars, and most of them don’t account for a silly cartoon character standing in front of it.
I’d be all for Ziggy still being off to the side somewhere, where those who like the feature could take a look, but those who don’t can easily ignore it. I’m personally 100% content with it gone altogether though, so I don’t want to rock the boat here.
Anyway, thanks, Memrise! I’m looking forward to getting my avatar back.
Edit: And of course thanks to @Arete_Hime for making the said poll, and all users who voted!
MemriseMatty and all Memrise product & development management,
Thank you for considering and listening to our feedback! I thought you hadn’t heard us at all, but fortunately I was wrong. Happy finding a suitable replacement!
Actually now the feeling is something between excitement and preocupation on what’s (who’s) coming instead of Ziggy, if these are not the old badges (as I expected).
Not sure @FerdinandO_o. They might go back to the old one. They might not. To be honest i have no idea. But at least Ziggy is gone. i dont care what it is. But i am excited for whats to come next as Im sure everyone else is
I don’ t believe that Memrise’s decision to abandon Ziggy had anything to do with suddenly deciding to “listen” to your users at all. I think that claiming that management has decided to listen to the users’ views on Ziggy is just one more example of the many fairytales they spin on the forums, to make themselves sound responsive and suddenly interested in their users’ opinions.
I think the far more likely scenario is that whoever made the original decision to impose Ziggy on us simply changed their mind on a whim, and has now decided to kill Ziggy off, but I’m sure that they wouldn’t hesitate to impose their next whim on us regardless of what we say about it, or how much we protest their decisions.
Certainly didn’t bring as many new paying users as expected, and maybe made some old ones to cancel their subscription. So now they realize “people” ( = their customers!!!) were right.
But whatever, it’s good to see this childish, unwanted, ugly creature go back to where it came from. Still wondering however how Memrise could think that people who spend hours learning all kind of stuff on their free time would actually like “Ziggy”.
The smart move now would be to bring back an updated version of the badges.
And back to the smart, simple and poetic “gardening” metaphore!
The gardening metaphor is nice but the icon slowly showing the plant become a flower is not that precise, seems the flower get stuck in a ‘flower’ mode that is growing extremely slowly.
I know numbers are boring but it would be easier to realize how well you know a word or construct if you had percentage numbers as reference.
Well, maybe, it’s not only ‘listening’. Then again, let’s take it from the most positive side: it’s going to change, and we hope for the better. Of course, there are many things that we both think should be better, but there are also many things they do pick up and I bet more often then we think. Let’s be positive and see what the product does do well, and that is still a lot! I do benefit from it a lot…
so, 5-6 days passed and the terribly ugly ziggy is still there and not budging… I was hoping to have instead of that kitsch creature a “listening skills” worthy of the name “listening skills” (and not dictation in various languages - especially dictation of “she, zhe, etzc” in Mandarin is such very well thought exercise). For example.
Random question. What is the hate for ziggy? I only started using Memrise in March and so have always just seen him as a character who evolves the more points you earn. As such Im curious what the hate is for something that doesnt even effect the teaching aspect?
Ziggy was ugly, childish, was implemented without anybody asking for it (while many users had long asked for changes/debugging/improvements that neither have been “listened to”, nor even answered to), and replaced a system that was funny, smart, and that most of the users were happy with.
Personally, I felt kinda insulting that they could think “he is the kind of person that will certainly like that dumb and immature new system”. Well, nope, I like to be treated as an adult and an intelligent person.
And many people were like: “Are they really using time and money on that”, instead of improving, precisely, the teaching aspect.
All of this wasn’t very important, but irritating on many levels. Basically, when you pay for a product, you don’t want to be treated like this by the company that lives on your money.
Seriously though, great to hear that the feedback’s finally been acted on. Very good news.
Good riddance, Ziggy!
Happy finding a suitable replacement!
