I’ve just noticed that the mascot name is now localized, and it appears as Загги (Zaggy) in Russian. Ziggy may have some unpleasant fascist-related connotation in Russian, so changing the name is a good idea.
Anyway, that new Zaggy sounds and looks as much awful as the original one, and I don’t want any Ziggies or Zaggies in my profile. My nickname is WildFox, why the hell it says I am Zaggy?
I hate that space-alien-contacting idea in general too. People who live in different countries are not aliens from the outer space. They are (we are) human beings and share the similar cultural values. I learn languages to talk to people, listen to music and watch movies, but the app tries to convince me that there are aliens with claws and tentacles there. I would not like considering either myself or other people in such way.
I’ve not been using Memrise for a month, looking for some alternative. However, despite the new disgusting design and tons of bugs, it is still the best choice for learning vocabulary. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be a part of the dev’s target audience.
Also, showing progress/effort as evolution is another bad metaphor.
Our language learning progress, and effort, is not evolution… it is a conscious directed process, requiring thought and hard work. Evolution is the opposite.
Ah. Watering plants was such a good metaphor. Shame it wasn’t sexy enough for them.
I was very disappointed too by the new “ranking” system. and noticed the streaks seem to be gone too! I just want to log my feedback here in case it would matter. Even though I love the memrise application and am a pro member, I have logged a negative rating hoping the feedback from people how care might be heard. I will not rewrite in my mail the reason why I think the streaks and meaningful ranking names were very motivating. For someone who likes progressing and regular effort, tracking this progress and having a long streak are a source of pride and motivation. Losing both of them have actually brought me to quite a slump in my training. I passed 49 Million points early September and was rejoicing at reaching the next rank, but feel this was stolen from me for no good reason. I am very sorry but it is difficult to be positive about the new ranking numbers and their explanations (maybe the target audience is younger children?). Well, again, for what it’s worth, I wanted to record my frustration, in case that might matter. I would be very interested to see positive feedback regarding the new ranking if there is… Have a good continuation, even though it might be withough me, It was a nice ride.
I totally agree with you guys (all the people and more mentioned in @YingBing0da9 - unfortunately cannot mention everybody because I am new in this forum)), and just logged my own comments. My own motivation went down the drain with those changes. I am a PRO member too and was quite happy to support the development of this nice (used to be better than nice) platform. What I did recently also is downgrade my rating on playstore. I know this is a water drop in the ocean, but that my be the way to get heard. My next move is likely to quit the PRO status, not worth paying if I play less and less. Maybe the Memrise marketing team should issue a statement that they have decided to follow a new direction and do not care about their “old” customers motivation…
Maybe memrise is being the prey of its own success, and getting money from paying customers actually give the opportunity to do more that what is actually good and necessary, with a (bigger?) team of developers.
As per best practices I have seen in other projects, it might be good to test your new ideas with some user group representatives, and even explain what the product strategy is.
The numbers in this image are always visible. The 6 in orange means I have a 6 day streak now (over all subjects) and the 91k in blue is how many points I now have. And then there are different badges for different achievements. I’ve spent a few hours over the last few days on there so most of the badges and points are from then.
The progression of levels seems okay. I’ve already spent quite a few hours on there and I’m still only level 3. I’ll pass 100k points very soon so I’m looking forward to becoming level 4 then.
(I see that 250,000 points is the maximum level, which you can quickly get, so these avatars at Khan Academy are also not motivating for longer term users.)
The choice of different avatars is a nice idea and you could play with it. Maybe I would like the option to choose images of Roman or Sumerian or Babylonian numerals for example. Or another minimalist idea would perhaps be an arc of n degrees that gradually grows to a 360-degree circle. Or just different kinds of things that grow like (imaginary) animals, insects or plants (I like flowers and trees and butterflies) or landscapes that grow from nothing to something.
That’s also a nice idea; a point of light that becomes brighter and brighter with each level. Or to stay with the space theme: bigger and bigger stars, real or imaginary. If real going from something like a white dwarf to a black hole. Or planets, nebulae, galaxies. I’d like that, a nice color picture of a nebula as an avatar. That’d be a nice way to learn the names and perhaps characteristics of them.
Then there’s also technological evolution, say from wheelbarrow to FTL spacecraft. Or organic evolution.
I don’t think Ziggy is about gamefication.
Take a good look at the pictures: the first thing which strikes me, is that they look innocent.
Memrise wants to do with Ziggy what Google wanted tyo do with their slogan “Don’t be evil”, and what eBay wanted to do with their simple colour scheme:
look innocent and not dangerous.
Actually hiding the fact that they are big companies with loads of money which try to get a monopoly in a certain sector and to squash all competitors out of the market, to have everything to themselves. WORLDWIDE!
If that would not be the case with Memrise, it would have been very easy to block those Russian porn scammers. They only have to be willing to give up the Russian market.
And it’s also the case where who the hell cares about spammers when we have actual utility functions of memrise that need to be changed. I’d rather a regression of many things (ziggy, for instance) than spending money on a “tech team” combatting bots.
“Giving up” on whole country because of few annoying spammers seem crazy. It would have some stupid consequences brw. Russians are already isolated as it is. Not knowing much foreign languages fed up with russian media - Memrise unavailable, well only to the detriment of everything … both on the etical and commersial basis.
I agree with TheFour-GatedDanzig on this one; I also find this whole discussion goes a bit crazy sometimes (let apart the demonisation of all things russia, probably putin almighty himself is spamming; besides, russia looks isolated if one looks at it only from the democratic party usa and some apparently not very enlightened eu “leaders”…)
they are big companies with loads of money which try to get a monopoly in a certain sector and to squash all competitors out of the market, to have everything to themselves
I’m sorry if I’m being importunate, but it’s been 3 months already and there’s still still no reaction to all the feedback here…
I understand that you memrise crew guys are the ones running the site and that you have the final word on the changes. That’s ok. The site is great and you guys did a great job creating it! Anyway, if you are not going to make any changes related to all this feedback I think we all would appreciate a notification about what´s going to be done and what is not. Just for the sake of knowing… That would be really helpful!
Thank you very much for running this site! You’ve helped me (and many, many others) a lot!
I had been away from Memrise for a while working on other stuff, and the other day I logged in to review a few things… and upon seeing this bizarre creature on my profile, my immediate reaction was a combination of “WTH??” and “Ugh.” So I must add myself to the list of people who are very much not impressed. (Edited to add: then I was so distracted by this strange creature that I never did that review) But I think there are bigger problems here than a difference from my personal aesthetic.
Somebody mentioned that the new design is supposed to be gender-neutral; I guess because of some notion that flowers are girly. Now, I personally never thought the site looked particularly feminine, flowers or none (I know quite a few guys who are avid gardeners), but let’s suppose it was more appealing to women than men. I understand why you would want to avoid that by making a more gender-neutral design. However, now you have an even bigger problem, IMO, namely that this design is not age-neutral.
As many people have pointed out, it looks very childish, like something from a preschool cartoon, which is very off-putting to people who aren’t little kids, especially adolescents who are trying to distance themselves from that little-kid image. In my opinion, the old design struck a good balance of being fun and colorful enough to attract kids, while being sophisticated enough to appeal to adults as well. This new design does not accomplish that at all.
If the design were girly, you might deter about half of your potential market. But using a very childish-looking design like this might deter maybe 75% of potential users (the latter being a rough number off the top of my head, but I’m sure significantly less than half of potential users are little kids).
I also agree with the observation that the garden theme made a lot of sense in the context of the very suitable “planting and watering” analogy for learning, while this whole space thing strikes me as just random weirdness.
