Is this something anyone can apply for? I’m actually not quite sure about whether I’d really like to do beta-testing (i. e., I would hate to be stuck with the beta if it’s not working halfway properly), but provided there were actually two separate apps (the regular one and the beta) or if there’s an easy way of reverting to the non-beta version, I’d be happy to participate!
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Thanks @Olaf.Rabbachin! Our Android devs are working on revamping the beta programme since we don’t have an efficient way of gathering and acting on the feedback that comes through. We’ll post an update once we have a proper plan for that, and hope that you will join then 
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Some transparency is always nice. And I hope that you understand that context won’t fix the issues we’re outlining
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It’s actually easier to leave/revert than it was to join ( not sure if it still requires going through Google plus dev page or allows joining through play store like with other sane apps )
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Thanks, @Kwarkje. And yes, I understand some of the things you outline will probably have nothing to do with the context.
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I think Memrise team should share a blueprint before making any actual change to the design and ask if people would like the changes or not.
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They actually have/had beta testing forum at g+, through which you had to join for that reason. Which didn’t improve much as you can see. They have their business strategy which they will have to execute against user will/feedback. Eventually correct the course when some stuff hits the fan and there’s money still left.
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It’s no longer community driven. If you still had that illusion it should be clear after the introduction of decks.
And they care about investors, this redesign is for them. There’s no reason to share such changes with end users.
Interstingly, the reason I’ve renewed my subscription for a year last time was community sponsored content, natives.
So far they didn’t give me another to renew this year. We’ll see how it works for them.
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We’ve just announced in a separate thread that we are going to develop an app for Decks and this decision came after listening to feedback and running further analysis on how community-courses are learned on mobile. We’ve certainly not been the best at communicating with users, but we are trying to turn that around.
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I’ll believe it when I’ll see it. But just having someone active from the staff here, is encouraging.
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If they ignore users too much it will lead to the death of Memrise.
From the book Code Clean by Robert C Martin a reference book for coding properly.
I know of one company that, in the late 80s,
wrote a killer app. It was very popular, and lots of
professionals bought and used it. But then the
release cycles began to stretch. Bugs were not
repaired from one release to the next. Load times
grew and crashes increased. I remember the day I
shut the product down in frustration and never
used it again. The company went out of business
a short time after that.
Two decades later I met one of the early employees of that company and asked him
what had happened. The answer confirmed my fears. They had rushed the product to
market and had made a huge mess in the code. As they added more and more features, the
code got worse and worse until they simply could not manage it any longer. It was the bad
code that brought the company down.
It look like Memrise here prioritising modifying designs over fixing bugs.
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We test a lot internally.
Every other week we invite users to our office to conduct iterative UX testing on new features and designs. We also have a team dedicated to research which has been expanded recently. We do a lot of standard online UX testing practices, surveys, questionnaires, card sorting, semi-structured interviews etc.
Our exec team make weekly phone calls to users. In the run up to Decks there was several sessions with Decks powerusers… But sometimes despite the best efforts things slip.
It’s always a bit discouraging to hear such negative atmosphere towards us, but we understand. People are invested in our product that’s why they care. We’ve also grown exponentially over a year, so our processes are a WIP.
But going forward we are being as bold and empathetic towards our users as possible.
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I’m glad to hear that, just being open about process is nice.
That said it seems to fly in the face of the current feedback ( not only from this thread, there are other popping up with valid, constructive concerns and it’s just started rolling out ) .
So what exactly went wrong here?
I have overarching concern regarding this, just slightly off topic. I’ve been waiting for grammar/chatbots for close to half decade by now? It gets half implemented for some official langs, abandoned, redesigned, half-released in simplified version then abandoned again.
From a paying customer perspective it doesn’t look good.
Get a grip memrise
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It more looks like you hit a stonewall and decided to turn your car back off instead of trying to get through, because it’s physically impossible. In the thousand comments long thread no one (!) supported the Decks idea without the apps. You knew very well that you warned only a small fraction of users about upcoming revolution, so it was only the beginning of a pretty big downfall. Therefore your latest decision is very logical in itself.
Still it does not mean that you will actually listen to users and improve user created courses, because you are intending to build a super innovative language learning app/website for so called “tourists” (sorry, guys, no offence). You absolutely forget about the other side of Memrise two-three years ago. Look around for the requested features - you are ignoring them all for a long time. I might sound a little pessimistic, but prove me I’m wrong.
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My Memrise App just updated on my phone and its new colour scheme is hurtful for long sessions. It also makes it almost impossible to study in a dark environment.
The white background, the yellow accents and the general high saturation level of the colours makes studying really unpleasant.
I use this app on a daily basis and I don’t want it to become a tiresome activity due to eye strain.
It would be good to work with ophthalmologists and optometrists if you’re looking for a new design for your App. Obviously, your last graphic designer is not using your App or he/she would not have chosen those colours.
Please Memrise, take the ocular health of your subscribers to heart and resolve this issue.
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I’ve never seen so many men wasted so badly.
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My comment wasn’t negative.You have users from all over the world so they can’t come to your office.I’m not saying there’s no survey created by you but I never saw one maybe you should promote the surveys better.
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It’s very common in software development unfortunately
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So why then do the community guidelines not also apply to Memrise employees who have posted numerous false statements over the years?
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When Memrise deliberately changed the way the system handled commas, and broke hundreds of community created courses, many Memrise employees posted false statements on the forum, claiming it was a bug, asking users for screenshots, telling us they would forward our reports to “the team” to “look into it.” Months later, Ben Whately himself appeared on the forum and admitted it was deliberate change, and all of the nonsense about bugs was false.
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When they changed the way the system handled sentences longer than fifteen characters. Employees posted numerous false statements, asking for screenshots, etc. but it was a deliberate change.
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When they limited some users to using the app for only 10 minutes a day, which greatly interfered with their ability to make progress and complete homework assignments, etc., the Memrise employees came here on the forum, saying repeatedly that they were “looking into it” for a whole month, then finally admitting it was a deliberate “experiment.”
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When they removed the Bio fields from our profile pages, a former Memrise employee came on the forum and made the nonsensical false statement that the Bio field was made “private,” when in fact it was completely removed.
I could continue citing many more examples of false statements posted by Memrise employees to the detriment of their users over the years, but I think it is clear from those I listed that Memrise thinks that they can lie to their customers and users and deceive them with impunity, then turn around and threaten a frustrated user/customer with being banned for posting mild criticism.
Treating your users with such contempt and hypocrisy will not help you survive as a company in the long run.
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