Relevant comic: http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2017/08/03/its-an-improvement/
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Thank You!
Good to hear from you.
(please! be giving us some feedback on our feedback …just a little bit more often … even if by “liking” something or someone in the thread or by curt “we care” reply - to make it show: you are watching and actually caring)
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Adam was the first admin and dev at memrise. Left before DZohar came.
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I’m quite positive that I see more
That actually explains it a lot!
I haven’t been following the intern events at memrise before everything started becoming a close-to-disaster, but it did seem as if somebody wanted to get rid of everything that was there before in order to proof him-/ herself from the bottom.
Kind of like a divorce … and we’re the children that are pushed around and have no idea about anything that’s going on before we’re getting hit by the changes.
(A scary thought, actually)
So I guess that there really is no hope of getting all the good stuff back again with Adam gone?
No that analogy doesn’t work at all. The vision of a company develops and the things that work when you have a small number of users sometimes don’t work when you have a large number of users, so the product has to change as well. I generally agree with the direction the product is developing in, but it’s the implementation that still leaves a lot to be desired; spaced repetition is good, but please have some variety in the review interval based on relevant variables; a cute character that grows with you is good, but have it grow in some logical fashion and have more levels, and so on.
Absent insight in the internal workings of the company, I’ll refrain from making guesses as to why changes are sometimes or often poorly implemented and why communication is lacking. I guess any problem can be more effectively attacked with more knowledge though.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Love the “studious toddler crowd” image!
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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 …
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I would add a ‘fake academy’ system with fake/cool titles and the badges or titles reflect properties like:
- Total points
- Number of words learned
- How many classes finished
- If created classes, how many and how many are using them
- Progress per N days, streaks and much more
plus other things that I didn’t think of during this 20 second brainstorm.
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those numbered levels are indeed much more boring than the previous grade names
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Hello Memrise
I’m a Pro member. I.A.N
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.
Thank you
I.A.N 
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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. 
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