Hi @vincoof,
The Memrise guys opened this new area in the forum recently for discussion of changes they were implementing - starting with ‘speed review’. Hope you don’t mind that I’ve moved your post here so that it can be considered along with other users’ comments on the changes.
I didn’t know this topic existed and I’m glad you moved my feedback there @alanh, many thanks!
I had the opportunity to try out more Speed Reviews. I had 91% and 93% win rates, and I still feel bad when I see the Game Over videos. Maybe it’s just me but I think it’s terribly counterproductive if this is supposed to motivate us. It’s like getting a B+ grade and then your teacher says “hello, you are worthless, have a good day”.
I think we should also get more time depending on the length of the question. It’s very stressful when you need to read a phrase with 10+ words, you must read 4 answers of 10+ words, and pick one in just a few seconds.
I kid you not, sometimes I don’t even have the time to read all answers before the time runs out. So now when I see a long question, I try to catch some of the key words and grab the closest answer. This does not work very well, but it’s better than not answering at all because of the lack of time.
I know the old Speed Review already had this issue. Maybe this is supposed to mimic the reality of a conversation where participants don’t have all the time in the world to think before speaking.
If this is wanted, so be it.
I for one highly doubt this design is intended.
In the real world if someone expects a Q/A to end in less than 5 seconds but he asks a long question that takes him 4 seconds, I suppose he would not yell at me if I answered in more than 1 second.
Heya! We’re already looking at the timer issue fyi 
On the game over screen - this is great feedback, and I agree with you. I think it’s a bit harsh, and I’m going to work on an improvement and get this into an iteration. Thanks!
On the timer - this is a known issue and something that we’re going to look at. At the moment the length of time is static, and what I’d like is to make it dynamic based on the length of the answers. Again, thanks for flagging though, as it means I can push it up the priority list!
Thanks for these! Tickets have been created and put into backlog.
New speed review is giving much more points than the classic one.
We just updated how many points you get, and this is being standardised across all our platforms, so as soon as the mobile teams implement the new code, it’ll be the same. Except obviously without the bug you pointed out above!
Hi Luke,
So I recently turned on Memrise Labs and went for a Speed Review. I gotta say I’m pretty disappointed and went straight back to the ‘old’ Speed Review, only to notice a couple of things again that were already bothering me some time ago.
You wrote that “Half the folks we talked to liked the fact it played to remind you of how it sounds, and the other half hate it because it plays over the next test, so it can get confusing.”
I actually agree with both sides and thus I’m quite confused that the solution you came up with was to simply not play the audio at all. I personally think a Speed Review without audio is not of much use for me, which is why I went back to the old version.
However it is true that the audio playing over the next test, with the timer already running, is pretty confusing. Sometimes the audio even gets cut off when it is too long.
Wouldn’t it be possible to have the option to choose whether you want audio in a Speed Review, and if you do, wait for the audio to finish and then show the next text and start the timer to prevent any overlaps? That might take some of the speed out of the Speed Review but since it’s optional, one could simply turn the audio off and be back to full speed.
I dont know how doable that is technically, but it seems like a solution that everybody should be happy with.
That’s exactly how it works in android app and I hate that I have to wait until the audio is over. I really love the overlap in classic speed review.
It annoys me too! I’m trying to come up with a solution around this
We’ve added the audio back in! It should be live now. I’d be keen to hear what else you were disappointed with…
Just an update: We’ve updated so the timer isn’t so janky, and we’ve fixed the bug with answering multiple times (although the points weren’t actually being counted properly anyway). I think we’ve also ironed out all of the keyboard shortcut bugs that were happening, but let us know if there are any left!
Hi Luke,
I tried a couple of reviews on my laptop and can confirm that everything was visible without the need to scroll. The number keys work OK but I found it quicker (and less error prone) to use a wireless mouse. I realise that option won’t always be suitable for laptop users.
Yes, the timer is much smoother now. Maybe it´s just me but it seemed to have speeded up!
Are you still planning to do something different with the ‘game over’ screen. Please do.
OK, there are a good few things here:
The timer is much smoother, many thanks for changing it.
I can hear the audio again, which is fine I guess. I think I like it better with audio just because I practice my listening comprehension even for a second.
The keyboard still does not work for me. I should mention I use Firefox’s ability to search text while typing.
As mentioned before, this was not a problem with the former Speed Review.
Also I’d like to point out that the new focus is barely visible. It just consists of a slightly thicker grey outline. The former focus was a green-ish background color change. It may have been a bit too prominent but I think we could find a compromise between the two.
I like the new speed review – except it doesn’t fit on the screen if I use my iPad in horizontal mode.
However, for the past few days, it has been crashing on some courses. Always in the same spot with something like:
TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating ‘e.value’)
ae — [sessionSlug].js:1:40735
useMemo — framework.04ce0ef619f63d0dfdf3.js:1:77796
dt — [sessionSlug].js:1:59264
The screen that pops up says it submitted an error, so hopefully it’s fixed at some point.
Hi @danielws - We’ve made a change that has fixed the cause of the error message. Thanks for flagging this issue. Let us know if there’s anything else you spot whilst we continue to improve the web experience!
@Adam_Spooner68, I hope this is the correct place Adam, but I find a lot of Communality courses fail to load a Beta Speed review.
Most times it tells me to learn more (even when I have learned everything) saying there is a problem.
It works fine for the Official courses and when I got to 100 tests and still had a heart or two left I got a congratulations and a big heart (which was nice) but after about 60 I began to flag (get tired).
PS
Speed Review works fine on the Android App on those courses and thankfully stops at 10 (my default ?) rather than going on to 100!
