I would say that the “vision” of Memrise didn’t just develop, but changed drastically right after Adam left.
If you look at this page on Adam’s personal blog, https://adamj.eu/one-minute-happiness/ you can see something that looks like the original Memrise vision; bright, sunny, happy, uplifting, positive, etc. Now that Adam is gone, everything on Memrise is dark, post-apocalyptic, alien, and senseless. Adam must have been the source of the happy gardening metaphor that drew us all into Memrise in the beginning. Now that he is gone, in my opinion, everything has changed for the worse.
I agree! The color palette on the page is simple yet engaging. The gardening metaphor reflected Memrise’s goal so well. The atmosphere has always been important to attract and maintain users. No wonder users have switched to other websites.
Agreed. And the atmosphere of Memrise is nothing like it was in the beginning. They originally billed themselves as a “social learning” site, where users would learn and socialize, competing and encouraging one another. But they abandoned all of that.
Even the interaction of the staff with the users is much worse now. In the beginning, the staff was very friendly and collegial towards the users in the forums. Ben, Greg, Adam and others used to engage with us and address our concerns promptly and respectfully. A user would point out a problem and Ben would say, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry for that. We’ll look into it and get it fixed right away.”
Now, when the staff does deign to address us, they are usually cagey, dismissive, and generally officious.
Of course, it’s just my subjective opinion, but the “tone of voice” used by the staff is very disrespectful towards the users, and I would almost say contemptuous.
Adam left Memrise in March 2014. I have an email from him saying he was leaving.
As I recall, he had various roles in the team and, from the summer of 2013 until his departure, he wrote the regular updates (site developments, bug fixes, etc) that were posted on the Memrise Blog page in those days. You can still find these in the ‘archive’ section.
I was sorry to see him leave, although it’s good to see from the link provided by xvg11 that he seems to be doing well in his current job.
I don’t know what role, if any, he had in the origins of the ‘Memory Garden’ metaphor but, if anyone is interested in the initial thinking on this, a quick read of the June 2011 blog post will show just how far Memrise has shifted from its vision in this respect!
If you have the time, there was another blog post in November 2011 which sets out the origins of Memrise. It’s an interesting read.
I have to agree, I used to recommend that everyone in my language class at university use Memrise and now I’m going to think twice because it’s so childish. Teenagers especially would care about this. I highly doubt that children at age 5 would have the discipline to do Memrise – there are better learning tools for that age group out there already. Memrise is great for teens and adults.
If they really are to make Ziggy “a thing,” they should make a specific “Memrise Kids” site with it, as well as kids-centered activities. Typing tests are likely too difficult for children (they would most likely be chicken pecking), and I read studies that show that kids shouldn’t really learn how to type until they’re older, around 5th grade, when they’ve already learned how to write, otherwise they don’t properly learn how to compose coherent thoughts.
Looking at all the comments so far, basically few if any like Ziggy so this was basically a failed experiment with most likely no user survey backing up the change.
Anyway, as for the ranking systems, the charm with game-like systems is constantly seeing progress happening. The current rank levels take a long time to achieve and the user feedback for progress is graphically minimal. I think whoever worked on Ziggy should focus on this instead.
One of the reasons I like Memrise is that its design is similar to a video game. But in order for a video game to be addictive, it needs to have the proper hooks, challenges, systems, player engagement, and facilitation of goal making/completing in order to keep users active and motivated. Reduction or flat-out elimination (dumbing down) of such features removes what makes this site unique and discourages those who seek a boost in motivation from using it.
I expected Memrise to improve upon and add to its game-like features, but the updates so far have indicated that this is not the case. The most passionate and dedicated user-base will always be the kids, teens, and adults who seek motivation, fun, and challenge from this site. Not appealing to this crowd is a huge, if not suicidal mistake.
The new art and features aren’t cool, they’re infantile. Kids typically think things that are too babyish are lame and teens and adults will simply find other alternatives if their needs aren’t met. Unless Memrise is trying to cater to the ever-so dedicated and studious toddler crowd, serious changes need to be made. Just my 2 cents.
How disappointing that you took away the system of batches, streak… it was so much fun learning this way, it added the extra motivation, I think before doing something as silly as this changes they should have make a survey !!! find out actually how many of us agreed to change to the new boring way, so disappointing memrise …
The new Duddy (Ziggy) thing is not so good. The older system/style was MUCH better. Ziggy makes no sense to anything Memrise and feels so out of place for the Memrise system. Ziggy system is not better than the old rank system, and is actually more confusing. I really cannot understand the reason for this change. It seems the “Design Team” has drained the ‘creative/constructive ideas’ bank. May I suggest you ask them to look at the ‘user feedback, fixes, and requests’ email instead of designing the newly created Duddy, (sorry, Ziggy).
Take this constructively. 1. Get rid of Ziggy. The concept is immature and doesn’t blend with the Memrise system at all. In other words; it doesn’t help explain, demonstrate, or show rankings any better than the last system. In addition; I’m a mature adult, and these child-like themes are so unappealing. 2. Bug feedbacks – work on these more. 3. User Feedback / Fixes / Function Requests (THE MOST IMPORTANT) thing you should be eager to check daily. Find the consensus and implement it. 4. A personal peeve with the Android app I hate. Voice/audio playback after an answer can’t be swiped away to the next word. I have to sit and listen to the(often poorly) recorded audio of the lesson. 5. No clear way to renew my subscription in my dashboard. How is a Memrise user meant to renew their Pro account when there is no CLEAR way to do so?
It is your users who make Memrise successful, please remember that. When something better comes along, users abandon a platform and head to the next. (I’d like Memrise to exist a little bit longer.)
Please take this feedback constructively from a long time user of Memrise. In the time I have seen the app get a heck of a lot better, but not 100% better. Keep trying please.
In the last 18 months, many major changes have occurred aesthetically that I absolutely dislike greatly. It appears Memrise has moved far away from its origins which is both good and bad. The balance needs to be better handled and implantation needs improving.
You get some‘wraps/kudos’ for sure; but I’m still going to keep pushing you for more and better work. Users, and paying user, deserve the best you can do, and then some.
I left a scathing review on google play just to ensure I’d get a response about the topic. From what I gathered about the response, Ziggy was implemented to try and reach out to a wider audience.
The main problem they seemed to have was that it wasn’t easily localised - meaning that they couldn’t convert the names into other languages. While I appreciate that this website is going for inclusion and want to make everyone feel comfortable, it means that it is slowly eroding everything that gave it personality in the first place. They’ve set their sights on a much wider audience and so have to simplify their product as much as possible so that it can meet the needs of as many people (to a basic extent at least).
However, this means that they slowly lose sight of what makes their website different and leads them to start ignoring what the community wants because it won’t neccesarily make them appeal to more people.
tl;dr While the Ziggy update does make the concept easier for foreign people to understand, it removes the wittiness and cleverness and personality that made people like it in the first place
Also, can they please move Ziggy in the app so that when you’re learning a course, you see how many words you’ve learnt rather than it - because if I wanted to look at it, I’d go to my profile page.
it does not, unless you want 2-4 years old to use memrise daily; the ziggy cannot attract too many teens and adults; they could have designed something less ugly and less booboo for the 2 years old
and taking into account that immediately after they changed the review script and that they made mems even less visible…
however, using the various solutions provided in here, I have ziggyfree memrise
This new f**ng ziggy ranking system is stupid, childish and nonsense. I want membrain/memguru/memking system back. I’d like to know which idiot invented something that stupid.
Thank You for providing some useful explanation, why the Memrise team might want to get rid of their beautifull idea with Mem-related names.
I understand now … still, as a non-native-english speaker I still feel this is rather silly fear on their part.
Anyway of they would like to, this would still be possible starting point for some new naming game, where we as a community here, might have helped … there are possibly many internationally understandable words, which we would have employed into the names … like:
MemGuru (international meaning)
MemLord (english - yet the meaning fully spread worldwide)
Membassador (international meaning)
and so on
I’m quite upset about the change. Both me and my boyfriend use this site every day. The purple colour is extremely garish and sickly looking. It makes me want to close the window as early as possible. The ranking system used to be really cool, now it is completely meaningless. Being a Meminence, now that is something to brag about. Nobody cares that a made-up abomination becomes another made-up abomination. Seriously, it is not even cute. It has souless, crossing eyes.
Also… who in their right mind would market foreign language learning with ALIENS!? The gardening theme made sense and was a beautiful metaphor. Space exploration on the other hand? Meaningless, borderline offensive.
What hurt the most was the loss of all the Mems me and other shared, though.
