@JuanGuaido, I was one of the users who complained about the 'whitish’ design and suggested a dark mode.
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The aliens were in the old design so I want them back. The purple theme, the aliens, the consistent, clean tidy UI - I want it all back.
@Hombre_sin_nombre - It’s a simple metaphor - if you’ve ever been abroad (to a place where 99% of the residents are native), you feel like an alien. The overall theme of this website doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that. Were you expecting a metaphor to tickle the deepest depths of your brain (and I’m oh so sure that’d be SO deep… )?
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I speak for the Desktop version - just look at how ugly this front page is when I log in…
it’s so inconsistent and messy :S
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this may not be a permanent solution because the server side code may eventually become incompatible with older versions of the client.
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It looks like Memrise’s Twitter is back to being active again. Of course they aren’t actually addressing any of the issues.
I’m at a complete loss. I’m invested in this because I literally got to use two weeks of a year long subscription. I waited, thinking this would get better. It hasn’t. Now I doubt I can get a refund.
Heh. So much for assuming good faith. There’s not even an official “oh, crap. We didn’t even think this would trigger headaches in some users. We are working as fast as possible to fix this!”
No updates, nobody official to say “I hear your concerns, and you’re right, this sucks”.
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@PolarBearCabal If you’re still within 30 days you can get a refund. I cancelled and refunded my new subscription due to the new design making the site so ugly and painful and aggressive looking. The change came right after I had paid. It’s not what I paid for anymore.
Here’s how to do it. Nice thing is that they do have an area where you can tell them why you’re requesting the refund. I don’t know how much they listen to it but it’s nice to think maybe they might.
There was also this somewhat lukewarm response from one of the UX folks on another thread, for what it’s worth.
“Changes are being considered” isn’t much, but it’s what we have.
In the meantime, I highly recommend using the app rollback trick that St.Birdy suggested above and kiboke’s stylish skin for your browser. It makes things a lot less painful. I feel like I can actually use the site again, at least when I’m on a computer that allows browser extensions.
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Such high requirements – have to traveled abroad for this metaphor be ease to understand – just prove the point that it is not a good metaphor for a company that serve people with different backgrounds.
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I stupidly waited, thinking they’d fix it. I’m past my 30 days because I wanted to give them a chance.
Yes, I’m a stupid idiot.
You are free to feel any way you want, but for a big international language learning business to use such metaphors as aliens, spies, secret agents, which have a lot of negative connotation in this field is no-good. Maybe it was good for some tribe thousands years ago.
There’s enough alienation in this world without Memrise’s metaphors, but there’s no Spaniards or Chinese on the Moon, there’s no direct association between language learning process and going into outer space. It’s cold and lonely out there, and all these metaphors are dividing, not connecting. People are learning languages to communicate, to better know each other, not to feel isolated or alienated.
On top of it, it’s not obligatory to have spaceships and planets to make a user friendly interface.
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Well the design has had time to settle in now and while it’s not as offensive to my eyes as it was originally (thanks to some early tweaks you made) it is still pretty poor to look at. You got rid of the space theme and yet there’s still a rocket in my streak counter on the app. You got rid of all the planets and left blank circles. The flower theme is still very much in there but clearly not been taken on as a main theme. You went for an ‘adult look’ and thought a bunch of really childish graphics and mishapen circles hit the mark? Removed as much colour as possible to make the site dull as dish water because more than two colours is apparently confusing? Thankfully it was only an aesthetic update. The materials and usability are still great for me but in terms of the visual update it was a step backwards. It looks very unfinished, with an unclear theme and really bad colouring.
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I didn’t even think about it, it’s effectively ridicolous! The rocket has absolutely no meaning without the space theme, I don’t get why they kept it.
Now it’s just a mix of garden theme elements, space theme elements, and some nonsense and certainly no theme graphics. Oh no wait, the theme is: yellow.
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Exactly. The only ‘reasons’ we’ve been given for the new design have been
1 to get away from the disparate space and garden themes and create a more unified look
2 to keep it fun and ‘joyful’
3 to achieve a more grown-up look
And yet
- As you point out, there are still space ships there alongside the flowers and the meaningless blobs, so, fail.
- So, so, so many people have been describing the new look as ugly, monochromatic, aggressive, depressing, bland, jarring, physically painful, distressing, obstructive to learning, textbook-like. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone describe it as fun other than the CEO. So, fail.
- Again, many, many people have indicated that they find the weird colour scheme and mishapen elements to look toddlerish, childish, or like it was designed by an adolescent. So, fail there too.
Since the new design has thus demonstrably,abjectly failed on all counts of its stated objectives, I can’t believe they still haven’t fixed it.
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Memrise is a small company. I just can’t see why people would even moan about such a small thing. If you’ve ever lived in another country (I’m talking about some of the more conservative countries like Japan), you will most certainly feel like an alien (they don’t have political correctness in the east).
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I don’t mind the new design 
it’s a bit of a shock to the system, but it’s simple and clean. I just would prefer a few more colours, especially when you’ve finished a level, to distinguish the words for review from the difficult words. I used to be able to scroll down and see at a glance that some levels had lots of difficult words, and others just words for review. But because the colours are all the same I have to slowly scroll and actually read the numbers.
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After a bit of use, I find the Decks design much better than the Memrise one, which is great. And than the forum one. perhaps the ugly orange on top is meant to make us spend less time here and more actually learning? 
I think the Decks design is cleaner and nicer, but the differences are rather minor for now. The course list could definitely do with a bigger design and functionality change.
However, I think Memrise should really pay attention to any issues related to accessibility. The aesthetic tastes are individual and less important. But issues like the font and contrast are important for people with certain sight conditions, the colourful buttons were mentioned as important to learners with dyslexia. Really, don’t be like Duolingo, which introduced a very bright design with different and smaller font and paid no attention to people with worse sight complaining (that often includes the older learners btw) or some learners with migraines finding the site to be a new trigger. It looks like Memrise has been listening to the users on various issues lately, and that is great. I just hope it will continue and accessibility (including colourful buttons or the contrasts) will be a high priority, when it comes to design.
Thanks for the improvements, Memrise team!
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One note, since I have notices slow changes in the deck designs, while learning. I know it is a popular thing to not use serifs on the web. But I really hope that the designers here understand, that while a font without serifs might look more minimal, it slows down the speed of reading and recognizing words, which is really crucial on a vocabulary learning app. So please keep the serifs!
Also it would be nice, if at least some in the memrise-team are addressing the issues that have been made with the new design. I mean there are still so many problems with the buttons, and It has been over a month now. The symbols seem misplaced and sometimes disappear in the black background, the Font on the buttons is not central. Those are small changes but they make a huge difference.
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It slows down reading for people used to reading everything in serif fonts. I find most serif fonts hideous, cluttered, and hard to read, and almost invariably prefer a nice clean, open sans font. So, mileage varies on this one.
My all-time favorite font is actually CG Omega. It is technically a serif font, but it recreates the original Greek architectural serif ( a very slight flare) before the Romans took it, misunderstood it, went totally gonzo with it and jumped the typographic shark.
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I’m not a fan of the redesign, but … I’ve gotten used to it. But what’s been driving me nuts lately is how difficult it frequently is to drag the sidebar course menu out from the side of the screen to switch courses. Sometimes I get it on the first try, but far more often I’m stuck for sometimes over a minute poking and prying and tugging at the edge of my screen trying to get the uncooperative menu open.
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I am fighting with the same problem but thought it was just me.
@MemriseMatty, can this be fixed, please.
I have that problem on the Android.
I have a suggestion that might help make it usable for people who have headaches triggered by the new design.
Can you either change the white background to something darker (not yellow) or give us the option to do so?
That seems like it should be relatively easy. I’m still unable to use it and I bought the year subscription. That’s money down the drain every day you don’t fix accessibility issues.
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