but i am not low-class, mamaaaa 
(in comparison with the product manager, i count probably as from “middle-class intellectual” background Whoops, I bet “intellectual” is fully “conservative”…)
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i still think they should ask david bowie’s heirs
Thank you for sharing this. I find it very interesting.
The article makes it quite clear that the whole point of Ziggy is increasing the percentage of new users who purchase the pro version. When Ziggy levels up, buyers are shown an ad inviting them to make a purchase. The graph in the article shows a sharp increase in “conversions”, i.e., purchases, after Ziggy was introduced, which means that Ziggy has been a marketing success.
Does it make forum users rush out to buy the pro version? Apparently not, but that was never the goal in the first place.
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I wouldn’t care how they trick the 10 year old kids into buying pro, but they just dumb down the whole memrise for them.
“With the collection mechanic, people were just downright confused. They couldn’t understand why they were collecting items, or what these had to do with learning a language.”
I’m still confused why they force the whole space theme. Growing a super-hyper-mega-boss master flower would do the job of ziggy much better. Oh, and they are genderless too.
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Maybe if Ziggy “conversions” start dropping, they could try that imagery next. Maybe an entire new decoration scheme every 12 months or so.
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“We conducted user testing with new users to see which would resonate more with them. Overall, the character concept resonated best with users, producing positive emotional reaction and connection for users, and made them feel the most excited.” - What is that “new users”, how many of them, what age, what languages do they learn? The new users had what choices (1. the nuclear amoeba 2. the old system 3.??? 4.??? etc.). How was the “resonate more (with what?)” put into measurable criteria?
Allegedly against badges: “The concept of ranking up with military badges does feel a bit ‘Starcraft’.” - Aha (what the f* is “starcraft”, and why were badges - that I never used or liked - “military”? And since when is “does feel a bit” an argument? How old were ifact the users, given that the article claims the resemblance with a game (probably) from the 2000’s (here nothing adds, in fact, the whole part is incoherent)
Judging by the article, all the variations offered to the alleged new users were ziggy-like. Allegedly, they were judged as “‘cute’, ‘happy’, ‘colourful’, and ‘approachable’.” - I wonder where the cuteness, happiness, and “approache-ability” came from (a yellow-lilac jelly-fish as “approachable” - mind boggling)
Again kitchen psychology in “off-centre way of speaking, where Ziggy always talks in the third person.” - Aha, that the learning is not made by the learner herself, but by a specifically non-gender-non-human lilac crab through a quasi-schizo suspension of disbelief is positive! and progressive!
The sentence “Two weeks after launch, our conversions from ranks has increased on average 250%.” does not refer in fact to the real amount of new paying users attracted by the nuclear calamity survivor.
“This has continued at a steady pace over the last few months, with a whole lot more folks joining up to Memrise Pro.” - A whole lot more folks, whatever that might be. And whatever the link with the ziggy might be
In the whole articl, there is not one not solid, but not one remotely acceptable evidence for the increasing appeal of memrise through means of the ziggy-thing. Of course, that there are users liking the ziggy, but there is no proof that the ziggy is increasing the profit of memrise.
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Sounds like they are focusing in on the specific point of offering “Congrats! You’ve reached a new rank! That deserves a 20% off sale to celebrate!” and how many users do in fact buy Pro at that particular moment. Which is actually interesting.
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I found the article’s arguments very unconvincing, and proof absent. The axes of the graph aren’t labelled with hard numbers, and without raw numbers, there is no way for us to see whether or not the change was statistically significant.
And even if there were a significant change in conversion rate after Ziggy, that doesn’t prove that the change was caused by Ziggy. There could have been other factors at play, because they also completely changed the levels and points system at the same time. Besides which, to argue that any change was caused by Ziggy is to fall victim to the “post-hoc” logical fallacy. Nor is conversion rate, by itself, the best measure of success.
I also think it’s very odd that nobody from Memrise posted a link to the article. Wouldn’t they expect us to be interested in their motives? Who was the intended audience for the article, if not the Memrise customers such as ourselves? It reinforces the impression that they have disdain for the forum users, and don’t consider us worthy of addressing. Or perhaps they knew that the rationale for Ziggy in the article was weak, unconvincing, and that we would never buy it?
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I totally agree that the article is unconvincing. What the article DOES do is provide clues that the whole point was about giving new users a nudge toward making an impulse purchase of pro.
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It Memrise is hoping to make the product some kind of collect all Pokemon, sorry Ziggy cards, then their focus is on something totally else than learning languages.
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No, Memrise’s survey does not sound like it was based upon sound scientific/statistical principles. So, the results cannot be valid, right? I’m curious as to how many people are currently actively using Memrise. We could define “actively” as at least three times per week for, say, at least three months. I’d like to see these statistics from the time Memrise was offered to the public, up until now. I’d like to see a break down of the ages of the active users to know if most users are 5 year olds, elementary school age children, high school or college age students, or older adults in their late 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50,s plus. Are the users mostly, male or female, or non-binary. (Non-binary ??? What is that? Computer sex? No 0’s or 1’s allowed???) Moving on: It would be interesting for statistical purposes, if nothing else, to know what percentage of people come from what countries in the world. Then, send a computer survey to everyone asking them what they like and don’t like about the new changes, after letting people use them for awhile, or even before making the changes. "Hey, folks. What do you like better Ziggy or flower pots? Levels 1 to infinity, 50 iterations of Ziggy, or the old ranking system. I personally feel that Ziggy’s appeal is probably strongest in the 5 year old demographic, but without asking all your regular users, or an unbiased sampling from your demographics, how would you know? My feeling is that most of your regular users are probably adults and not young children. This asking for feedback, doing Bata Testing, or whatever, should be, IMO for all changes to features that have been in place for a long time and people have become used to and like. I really like Memrise, and I like what I read about how, and why it was started. Like others, though, I do not like the new changes that have taken place recently. I only use a PC to do my lessons. I like seeing the number of words I have to review on my Dashboard, without having to click buttons, I don’t really like auto accept, and Ziggy and spaceships are way too juvenile for me. To change slightly what others have said, “If it ain’t broke you don’t have to fix it.” People tend to like those comfortable, broken in shoes that fit well, and get them where they’re going.
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I’ve just added my thoughts here:
you might be of course right in terms of learning sth, but in terms of paying the wages… i am completely against unpaid work (me doing this and that on memrise was my/our way of thanking for what I/we got… at that time)
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@xvg11 I honestly don’t really care what gender (or non-gender) it is as long as it doesn’t affect the site that I’m using. Like @fauxtronic wrote below, I didn’t consider it either, before I read this:
I, in my arrogant opinion, think that you’re making it out to be a bigger deal than what it really is, but, again, that’s just my opinion. It’s not like it’s physically, mentally, or emotionally affecting you. It’s not like it being gender-less is going to make the world’s people decide that they really aren’t male (if they are male) or female (if they are female), even if what they feel is otherwise. There is also enough of that going around in the schools and whatnot. Please don’t get mad because I’m NOT trying to cut you down or belittle you in any way, but if it’s not hurting anyone, there shouldn’t be any reason why you would try to strike something up where there shouldn’t be anything to strike up. By the way, anyone who’s reading this: please note that I’m straight, so my reply to the starting of the discussion is not because I’m trying to defend my gender. I just, honestly, don’t understand what the problem is…
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Where in my post did I say there is a problem? I simply shared a post that I found on the official Memrise Product Development Blog about their motivations for totally revamping Memrise in the way they have done.
The fact that Ziggy is either androgynous, genderless, or non-binary was not news to me. I initially read it six months ago, when Luke stated it in his June post on the Memrise Blog that Ziggy is “androgynous.”
https://blog.memrise.com/2017/06/26/meet-ziggy-memrises-new-mascot/
At that time I don’t think that many users gave Luke’s description of Ziggy much thought, because most people don’t choose to spend their time contemplating the gender-identity of space-jellyfish.
What I found very interesting, puzzling, and surprising in this current article, was that the Memrise team stated that in order to make a statement about their “progressive values,” they had deliberately injected the very controversial subject of gender-identity into what previously had been a very straightforward flash card app.
Why would they decide to make their space-jellyfish character explicitly “non-binary,” which according to Wikipedia, is a synonym for “gender-queer,” which is a term that many people would have a reaction to? And having decided to make a socio-political statement with their product, then they should not be surprised if customers, who may or may not share their socio-political viewpoint, express their positive or negative reactions, especially when the product is often used by children in a scholastic setting.
I would have been equally puzzled if they said that they had decided to make their imaginary space-jellyfish explicitly Christian, Sikh, Jewish, or Moslem, for example. Why inject such emotionally charged and divisive attributes into a space-jellyfish in a flash card app? What would they hope to gain by doing so?
Memrise used to be a simple but effective learning tool, with a great community of contributors, that started off with a gardening metaphor. Flowers and gardening are simple to understand and as non-divisive, inoffensive, and non-controversial as any metaphor could possibly be. Why throw that all away and replace it with an “irreverent”, “non-binary” space-jellyfish? Don’t they want to appeal to the widest possible audience?
So, the focus of my post is not primarily on the ill-conceived space-jellyfish’s lack of gender, but on the Memrise team’s incomprehensible decisions to destroy a system that worked and everyone liked about their product, and take things in a very strange, controversial, and alien direction.
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Point taken. I’m sorry, I guess I misunderstood and thought that you were just harping on the character building itself, by way of the title and the discussion and what you had originally posted (how you had posted it). I’ve read some posts where that’s what they were doing (although some, I don’t have a problem with for they had very good reasons). That’s the way that I had read it, what with the whole parent/children thing. I had read the article, which I, too, found pretty darn interesting. I should have asked you in depth before I rattled on and I shall make it an appoint of not doing that again. 
My apologies. I do agree with you, though, in that if you are going to do something, you shouldn’t go half way. Like Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield wrote “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well; and nothing can be done well without attention.” You shouldn’t just decide something and only go half way, especially if you’re (the Memrise creator(s)) looking to ‘help’ the general public,and the people there don’t agree with something and then you (whoever decided it) doesn’t listen to them and try to fix it, or just goes plainly in full reverse. That really doesn’t help. Again, my apologies, @xvg11 and I will pay more attention (or ask more questions first) before making assumptions and looking like a total idiot. See, I can learn, too! 
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I am female. When I was a teenager I invented the nickname “Ziggy” for myself, because I identified with the cartoon character that always has a black cloud over his head. But everybody thought it was from Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Anyway, like you, I thought Ziggy was male. And really I don’t care one way or the other. I could say a couple of political things here as well, but will keep my mouth shut for now
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Ziggy or jellyfish being male or female has zero importance for me for learning languages. Good tools that work and are reliable is no 1.
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I found it every time very strange when somebody (an institution, young person etc) tells one how not to feel discrimated and at the same times takes good care to deeply humiliate that one. I personally did feel insulted to be represented as a ugly lila whatever. I doubt that the ziggy has anything to do with “empowering and inclusion”, because, save very young kids surrounded by standard toys and cartoons (therefore being part of or longing for the utterly white-ish male-ish - “brave explorer with big claws” - mainstream culture), no one can feel happy to be “depicted” in such manner.
(A Honduran or a Bengali fighting hard for a bit of education and landing by mistake on memrise is probably not very sure about how the ziggy should help her learn)
(to the mental reply of the young product manager that “you studied till very high up, you’re white an priviliged, you don’t know”, I’d answer “haha, you have no idea”. But for sure I don’t belong, I never did, to the fav pets of those “white and privileged” who care so much for their fav discriminated ones)
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