4 ms·

I have to agree with this. I'm a language junky myself - I live in Budapest, have lived in Germany and Puerto Rico, and last year I discovered and fell in love

by Vivtek 11y ago

I have to agree with this. I'm a language junky myself - I live in Budapest, have lived in Germany and Puerto Rico, and last year I discovered and fell in love with Duolingo (why yes I do want to be practicing and learning six languages at once), so I'm basically 100% your target demographic. I also followed the link to the site - the "try it right now" on the Spanish email quote is a truly fantastic idea, and well-executed - but for the low-information user (i.e. me) your UI was a tad confusing. Requiring me to sign in to look at phrase translations was also off-putting, even though I can only assume this is some kind of research usage restriction.

steveridout 11y ago
Sign-in for phrase translations is because that's one of the limits of the free plan, you get 10 / day for free and you can upgrade to premium for unlimited. I could try to make it more seamless by imposing this limit based on cookie or IP address if they aren't signed in yet. Would love to know what else you found confusing about the UI?
- bpicolo 11y ago
  I got the popup about translating phrases every-other word I clicked. That bit was pretty frustrating : (
  - draven 11y ago
    Same here, I got around it by first clicking the translated word a second time (to deselect it) before clicking on the next word.
- Vivtek 11y ago
  This is one of those questions that's hard to answer, because by framing the answer you're already analyzing the UI, thereby making it less confusing. One irritant was getting the phrasal popup repeatedly. Once it's appeared, I pretty much already know I can't do that (as noted by others already). The default should be something like deselecting the first word to allow me to look at the other. Put a non-modal message somewhere obvious that says "hey, if you log in you can see phrase translations, too". I think your idea of seamlessness with a cookie is really promising. Let me see what it does, but warn me that I'm going to run into a limit. Maybe. There was no real try-it-out-now link (that I saw - I'm not looking at it now, just reporting my perceptions at the time) except for trying it out on the Spanish quote - which again, I found remarkably clever. But the result is that I wasn't entirely clear about what you were actually offering. Possibly a little picture of the main UI somewhere on the front page might help. Not sure on that - as I said, it wasn't that difficult to poke around and find things once I decided I was interested, but I normally don't notice that phase at all, if you see what I mean. Hope that helps.

by Vivtek 11y ago

steveridout 11y ago

Sign-in for phrase translations is because that's one of the limits of the free plan, you get 10 / day for free and you can upgrade to premium for unlimited. I could try to make it more seamless by imposing this limit based on cookie or IP address if they aren't signed in yet. Would love to know what else you found confusing about the UI?

bpicolo 11y ago
I got the popup about translating phrases every-other word I clicked. That bit was pretty frustrating : (
- draven 11y ago
  Same here, I got around it by first clicking the translated word a second time (to deselect it) before clicking on the next word.
Vivtek 11y ago
This is one of those questions that's hard to answer, because by framing the answer you're already analyzing the UI, thereby making it less confusing. One irritant was getting the phrasal popup repeatedly. Once it's appeared, I pretty much already know I can't do that (as noted by others already). The default should be something like deselecting the first word to allow me to look at the other. Put a non-modal message somewhere obvious that says "hey, if you log in you can see phrase translations, too". I think your idea of seamlessness with a cookie is really promising. Let me see what it does, but warn me that I'm going to run into a limit. Maybe. There was no real try-it-out-now link (that I saw - I'm not looking at it now, just reporting my perceptions at the time) except for trying it out on the Spanish quote - which again, I found remarkably clever. But the result is that I wasn't entirely clear about what you were actually offering. Possibly a little picture of the main UI somewhere on the front page might help. Not sure on that - as I said, it wasn't that difficult to poke around and find things once I decided I was interested, but I normally don't notice that phase at all, if you see what I mean. Hope that helps.