about dyslexic users is so true… Mine is not really bad, but now I have to spend about 5–8 minutes just to find the button I need. It is “review” button on one course. I have to spend minutes just for find it between all other courses! 'cause all I can recognize is YELLOW BUTTON 1, YELLOW BUTTON 2, YELLOW BUTTON 4, YELLOW BUTTON 5… Wait, where was yellow button 3 which I need?.. I’m not quite sure now.
8 Likes
Heh. According to them, this is a more grown up look. I feel like they’re living in opposite land.
8 Likes
It has to be a very young person, I would guess a male person, who came to this decision.
It reminds me of Ryanair website. It’s horrible too.
3 Likes
It doesn’t really matter the gender of the person. What matters is apparently they don’t seem to be listening. From test group, to apps, to the main site. Google gave gmail users the ability to toggle back and forth from old layout to the new one. Memerise, If are not being stubborn would give users that ability instead of trying to force us to use it.
5 Likes
The New design is horrible, please give us back the previous design it was cool. This childish design makes the wonderful app less enjoyable.
6 Likes
Maybe they think that, they are targeting more people with this cheap look.
1 Like
Shock-effect color use is not really helping targeting users, actually the opposite.
7 Likes
The contrast is awful, it’s hard to look at. At this rate it’s highly unlikely I’ll be renewing my subscription. I like the app, but if I can’t bear to look at it and don’t enjoy opening it, it’s not going to be worth it for me. What a shame, as the previous design was fun and usable, but in the name of continuous ‘progress’ we keep seeing unnecessary redesigns like this. I’m not against redesigns on principle, but they have to be justified, and much like Slack (terrible) it seemed that the main motivator was a disconnect in branding… which could have been solved much more easily without throwing the whole thing out.
10 Likes
Ugh. I’ve had it with this ugly new design. Only Memrise could of thought of this colour scheme. They’ve completely demolished the beauty which was once there. With Decks and now this. Could they do anything else. Sorry to rant about this Memrise. But come on! What happened to what it used to be?
7 Likes
The new design is a complete mess. It looks like a game (badly done) for a 5 year old kid. People have invested time and money to learn languages, and coming up with a design which has a pathetic user experience and a strategy that’s so confusing is very saddening. I had subscribed for one year.
And now, I deeply regret it.
11 Likes
Agreed, the old one was so colourful and attractive. Now EVERYTHING just looks the same, there are literally only two colours, and it’s hard to tell everything apart, it’s even hard to tell Decks apart from the main Memrise website.
The only good thing is some of the new shapes added to the learn, review etc buttons, but how the profile pic of everything isn’t round is just wrong.
How boring it looks overall really stands out like a punch in the face. So can the team please make it look better or just back to normal.
We don’t want to believe learning a language is tedious as soon as we open the page, just because the design looks dull.
9 Likes
Loved this app for a long time. The space theme made the lessons clear and felt like a nice progression system. As a UX designer myself (and one studying UX engagement in language learning at that), I can’t understand why for the life of me you’d replace such a creative and innovative theme with one that is so purposefully bland.
There used to be this nice symmetrical sense of progression, of moving “upwards” as you completed your lessons with the rocket ship. This fit nicely with the way you moved to different planets, which represented concepts with lessons. Visually this created a sense of accomplishment seeing yourself improve and the bubbles fill with colorful planets you could scroll through. If this was meant to be replaced with a new design or theme that’s fine, but nothing has been innovated on to make the lesson track in a similarly engaging way. It’s just a bunch of bubbles linked together with a flimsy string now and the most muted colors so there is little sense of progression.
Furthermore the buttons on the bottom of the lessons have been made absolutely enormous taking up a giant quadrant of the screen. Where as the color hinted you before to click to start a new lesson in a subtle way, the new bold yellow screams at your eyes to the point it’s hard to read or focus on other parts of the lesson selector that are far more muted. In the lesson itself, bright yellow on the edges pull your users’ eyes away from the content in the center where the focus and engagement should be.
Doing this doesn’t just hurt the looks, it reduces memorability. Mature design focuses attention in creative engaging ways that provide memorable experiences. There’s nothing special about this design that says “grown up”, it shows a lack of confidence in what made memrise special from the competition. I loved this application and pointed to it as a beacon of great sensibility in design and gamification to my peers and now I can’t use it as the example I once loved. Extremely disappointed and hope they change it back or find a better middle ground within the design team.
P.S. For recommendations, add a theme changer in the settings. You get your “grown up” look, and old one. Make a selectable at the intro screen of two images of either theme people who are new can click on. Then pull metrics from usage of what theme users choose and make a decision. Can tell you sentiment is probably going to be heavily skewed to the space theme, though more user choice is never a bad thing in this case.
15 Likes
Memrise confirmed that we’re going to have a Dark Mode. They are working on it. Isn’t amazing?
7 Likes
That is good news! Where did you hear it?
Will it apply to all the memrise products or only the memrise app?
3 Likes
They answered a review I posted in their Play Store page, so, it applies to MemRise app.
If it will be an option for others MemRise products, I have no clue.
4 Likes
Thanks for replying so quickly! I didn’t know that they responded to app reviews, that’s interesting.
2 Likes
Wtf is this new design. Who thought of these colours? Is it for colourblind people? Make it an option. It is not for everyone.
7 Likes
The new design looks so childish, it’s unbelievable. I always thought the old one was just friendly and inviting, but all this yellow is really distracting. I was so used with all the colors of the old design, didn’t even have to pay attention to the buttons, I’d know what it was just by the color. Now, anyone could argue we just have to get used to it, but really, everything is grey and yellow (or dark purple, whatever), but the buttons… who made that design? It looks so oversized, it’s simply annoying. Now when I visit the memrise site, it’s just screaming at me “SPEED REVIEW, SPEED REVIEW”. It’s just visually unappealing.
8 Likes
I can’t look at it either, it hurts my eyes after a few minutes so I created a stylish skin/theme for the desktop version. You can use it too, it will look a bit better and I’ll improve it even more over time, but it’s good enough for the start:
- install stylish browser extension: https://userstyles.org/
- install my memrise skin/theme: https://userstyles.org/styles/171471/memrise-eye-burning-design-fix
5 Likes
Oh thank you thank you thank you!
1 Like