I don’t know how you guys thought the new design was a good idea. I mean, it’s just aesthetics and not functionality that changed, so it’s not too big of a deal, but still, what were you guys thinking? It looks like something that either a kid or a stoner would come up with. Surely whoever okay’d it would have known that it wouldn’t have been well received. If userscripts worked on decks, this would have made me instantly jump over to decks instead.
Instead of changing design like this, why not have a list of designs that people can choose from? You could even make it a paid feature to further incentivise people to pay for pro.
calling the one who came up with this a stoner or a kid is …well, not productive (even tho im just as disgusted by it). but i agree. thats a good idea right there to make switching between designs a pro feature and have the basic design and this new design for free.
Although I’d agree with offering the ability to change the design as a Pro feature, I wouldn’t advise having the current/new design be the default for the non-Pro users. While you want some incentive to move to Pro, the new design is a disincentive to use the service at all, much less pay for it.
To me it is difficult to interact with because the design cleverly hides the useful information on the page by making the primary content structure have a color value very close to the background. Then the uniform contrast of the content adds another layer of difficulty for the user to struggle through.
I believe the design is risking its ability to communicate with users because of those primary issues.
Having looked at Decks this morning, and the fact that the new Memrise icons have invaded our Decks dashboard (badly, with the wrong size settings - almost like they’ve been overwritten by accident), it makes me worry that Decks is heading for a further makeover! I wish I lived closer to the Memrise offices so that I could go and TALK to someone over there about what on earth they’re thinking/planning. This silence is making me think they’re just planning on ignoring it until we stop complaining (because it’s difficult to keep complaining when nobody responds) and then they’ll say “see, we knew you just needed to get used to it.”
I just wish we could talk to the designers and then the people who they tested it on. That goes for a lot of things.
Edit: i think someone has replied saying they were grateful for the feedback - I think where one of our keen members mocked up a different colour scheme