Or (4) one could just look at the first 3 letters of the name of the company that used the associated level names and figure it out. I don’t think it was rocket-science (and probably not a quantum leap in any age level intelligence).
I also notice that there are a number of courses in Memrise that teach users what the various level names are (or rather, were). I wonder how many new courses there will be that teach users about the new names (i.e. Level One, Level Two, Level Three, etc.) Seems pretty boring.
But again, I hope others will respond to your request for opinions and input. Have a good day.
@Arete_Hime, it’s obvious to point out but: let’s take into account the rank badges look clean, fresh, and unobtrusive. “Ziggy” looks like someone obsessed with neopets campaigned day after day to redesign Memrise. The frustration is twofold.
1), They made a thread about this because they knew everyone would hate it. Everyone did hate it in the thread. They went ahead with it. Everyone still hates it.
2), People pay money for this website, and instead of implementing substantive changes they pay their designers for this crap.
I said somewhere the main issue is the number of levels, right now worse than that is of course the deletion of the badges.
@pdao, @TheFour-GatedDanzig, I think you’re saying (people are saying) the new character looks ugly or it is displayed badly? I’m not arguing with that. Actually, if you think that, and I do to a degree, perhaps giving some thought to my question is a nice thought exercise?
I was thinking perhaps
loop
{
radical change,
gradual growth for n levels,
}
Most motivational ranging systems have a reward as the carrot. A cute evolving cartoon only inspires 4-8 year old kids. Here are examples of what I think better motivational rankings based on higher levels:
more interesting features enabled
cheaper monthly fee
access to unique learning content
listing in a list of masters on the same level
give rewards
and so on. It’s actually pretty simple to use Internet search and find more similar advice such as:
For those of us on “Pro” we do have a daily streak which I have talked much about.
Namely I visit daily but flit between subjects and courses (as one can’t have long streaks on short courses - without some clever tricks). [For the record I hit 100 and quit that course afterwards as it was a nice number.]
Sadly the clock stops at 365 even thought I have kept this up some 3 year or more. (No chance now but I also asked for a 1 year, 2 year etc badge.)
that is simply not true… (but i understand that you advocated such change, as you believe in gaming, but children dont play the same games rom 2 to 18… ) Too many hurdles? so it is indeed about dumbing down, again?
most people got the meaning of the old badges, and we had many discussions in the old fora on mempress and overlady and overcat and cat with the nose in the milk cream and why that sword (will ziggy get instead the nato-usa shield against … whatever?).
Do not extrapolate from yourself to others. This horrible ziggy hookes exactly whom? and it is way too big! and it is extremely condescending (“evolution level”, jeezieee) ! I’ve been learning for years now and dislike this arrogance obvious in the “joke” that some poorly designed neopet made the learning for me
This is extrapolating from yourself. We both don’t know whether the millions of new users “got” the meaning of the names. I’m going to guess no, because many will not speak English so they will not know what a “memocrat” is supposed to be. Your comments about “Ziggy” and how it is implemented on the site is beside my point (do I have a point?) Only thing I did was ask a question:
Like a lot of people I was a big fan of the gardening theme and started using memrise almost 5 years ago. Having worked in branding, a couple things stand out to me:
One individual’s vision is probably dominating the efforts.
A very tempting goal (like lofty dreams of how widespread memrise could be implemented in schools) is the main motivation behind what comes across to users as “sacrifice the few for the greater good.”
I feel they have an overestimated ideal of what people want in memrise, and that vision is what is pushing forward. This marketing style has the feel of someone involved in large corporate projects around 2007-2008 when the look of mobile was just starting. It also feels like there’s a heavy focus on a “tweens” demographic that is more and more abandoning what is “cool” for an older audience and the marketing-focused group probably has experience with that demographic.
I’m not going to insult the art style, because it’s not objectively bad, it’s just that it’s targeted to the very young. The language and art style and energy used on the website now takes very little “risk” in what would be considered appropriate to kids. Even if they did decide to just target kids, the style is coming across as preschool. This simple, lack of risk that goes much too elementary points to someone who oversaw a younger demographic, but has a clear disconnect from more corporate work. What was okayed from the memrise designers was likely done so not because this is the best of their talent, but because it’s what that dominating vision mentioned before is giving the OK to.
-If they really had passion for this style, why are certain app features not well thought-out?
-If they need a Ziggy, why not lend customization where points are used to allocate certain enhancements to Ziggy for interactivity and uniqueness? I’m personally not a fan of the Ziggy direction, but there are clear pathways to take advantage of the G rated, kid-friendly lean. Them not doing that is what gives me the feeling of that domineering push of sporadic ideas, vs. a coordinated vision.
Basic marketing color theory shows that purple stirs creativity in the brain, but instead of working that into the website theme, they slathered purple everywhere, without being subtle about it. Thoughts on color-brain relationship should be second to the identity of the website and brand. I can think of tons of directions they could have taken the style of the site that would still be G-rated. Evernote comes to mind with the subtle green in the logo and and essentially stylized notepad. Or take a step further and look at the art style of the Wii game Okami. For a border-less simple app direction look at the meditation app “headspace”.
Not really sure what i’m trying to get at here, except for users to just realize there’s likely a vision that is pushing those changes that seem ridiculous that just happens to be off-target and that hopefully once that vision is considered “met”, regardless of being in space or a website about magical penguins, then we will begin to see the more creative forces that make sense come back to play.
The Space App - which has evolved over the last two years or so, with all the ‘features’ and gizmos and
The original web version with planting, ranks, multimedia levels etc as experienced on the web several years ago, when keen users created a whole host of non-language courses to enhance the user’s experience.
UNQUOTE
Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a choice what ‘skin’ we wanted to see.
I joined memrise because I liked the gaming-like character. I love languages, but I have trouble keeping my vocabulary updated.
I felt like Memrise solved this for me. The “planting” and “watering” in addition to the puns around the ranks was exactly what I needed to make myself come back, giving me motivation to pass my language exams without difficulties.
When that “watering”-design was taken away, I lost a part of that motivation. Well, it’s obviously only words, but it did mean something to me, and I won’t give up hope that it might come back one day.
When the hills and the day/ night designs were taken away, I didn’t feel comfortable either, now being faced with a dull astronaut and an empty banner in a color I cannot define.
If the old desings were too outdated, then why not make a collected set of possibilities for us to choose from? (Since there were comments about changing the astronaut with some more designs at some point anyway?)
Well, and now seeing a weird alien covering my profile picture.
A nice and cute idea to bring the life back to the website, but I agree to those saying that it is too childish. It reminds me of some of the mascots I used to have in my primary schools homework books.
Of course it needs time to adapt to the new system, but I also don’t feel like a number based level system fits to a language/ science/ general knowledge learning website.
I know perfectly well that a site needs to progress to not become boring and I’m usually not the one quitting something just because of some changes, so please don’t get this wrong; I still like memrise and I will of course continue using it, but I’m not as happy with what it became as I might should be.
So many people including me prefer the previous icons to “Ziggy” because they are not children. I am wondering what reaction the Memrise Team has to such a great number of users’ opinions. I hope the team will give us options about the signs of ranks or levels.
