I have to be honest. The website is not friendly and easy to follow

Is so hard to navigate in the website! plus is very slow to load the content. yeah I can understand the slowness is due to the bast amount of content in the website, but seriously is really hard to navigate around all this place. This is not something it can be fix by changing something. I think the whole website needs a new restructuring.

I know there is a bunch of videos explaining how to browse around here, but you literally need to study it. This site needs to be much more SIMPLE
Sorry, this is just my humble opinion.

Thanks for consider it

11 Likes

I agree with you

1 Like

I agree. LingQ should take a page out of Apple’s playbook and get rid of a lot of the silly cartoons and clutter which makes things hard to follow. A good website is intuitive, in as much as it should be possible to figure out without a lot of searching for instructions. I love this program, but it could be so much better for those that are not computer geeks.

6 Likes

100% agree, it’s a great bit of tech but terrible usability. It took me ages to work out how to use it in a way that is useful for me. I wonder what the churn rate is for LingQ…quite high I expect, which is a shame.

2 Likes

If they got rid of all the silly cartoons, roses and meaningless rewards for a start would help. They should then go through every interactive feature on the page and review their utility. I think this would eliminate about half of them. Then they should provide on the home page links to instructions on how to use every feature. For example, I get these requests for writing corrections, and while I would be happy to respond, I can’t figure out how to do so. While I’m not a computer geek, I do have half decent literacy, and it bothers me that such an excellent learning program is missing so many opportunities to do much better by simplifying the interface.

2 Likes

I agree too. I don’t know who develop the website and the android app but certainly was not a UI designer. Everyday i’ve difficult to start my lessons because find them it’s not intuitive. LingQ it’s important to hear the users feedbacks and improve the system.

2 Likes

I agree. Android app must be much better. Error occurs suddenly and unreasonably when I try to create lingqs. On the other hands the system is not very useful for german language. Because the most of the german verbs are “trennbare verben” and the system does not allow to create lingqs for “trennbare verben”. Someone should consider it and fix it, otherwise Lingq system will not become a useful system to learn German. Anyways, I love it and use it.

I don’t know if you guys have experienced the classic version before, because for me it was more intuitive for the home page to be the list of lessons/courses I’ve gone through before rather than have a list of lessons “feed or recommended lessons” that changes everyday making it more confusing for beginners. (Not trying to be that guy who disses at any new updates ;-))

What I Mean: This: Login - LingQ albeit with modifications I will mention later & don’t know if link works for other ppl…crossing fingers here: should be the home page IMO where you can switch between your courses and lessons.
Then, have a completely different page (to go there you click on a visibly large button on the top?) titled maybe “Find New Lessons Here?” where you click that and subsequently switch between Newly Created Lessons and Feed (lessons people have liked recently). I understand that the home page currently features “recommended lessons” to guide newer Lingqers but I feel that the current template is not organized clearly enough, and can be fixed with my methods above (Just My Opinion :P)

I can understand the confusion because on the page I linked previously, there’s currently like this multilayered “New Lessons vs My Lessons” then below that for both pages “courses vs lessons,” and it becomes perhaps confusing.

Edit: Good Stuff About Lingq: It’s faster now and I like the ability to flip through pages in each lesson, as well as the font/visual design of Lingq in general, and the motivational quotes while loading. :smiley:

yes, LingQ is confusing to use and its hard to find the content you want to find. i still can’t figure out how to use many functions.

1 Like

can’t stand those quotes, they de-motivate me! ; )

3 Likes

Da tut sich, wenn du trennbare Verben behandeln willst, auf Grund der beliebig langen dazwischen liegenden Nebensätze ein Abgrund an Schwierigkeiten auf.

1 Like

The website is perfectly fine. Just focus on the learning and enjoy the rich features and content here instead of whining about details. The LingQ team has been steadily improving the experience for years and will continue to do so.
The only thing I would change would be to eliminate these noisy “I maybe found a bug” threads in the forum. Problems should be reported directly to Support (silently) and not discussed in the forum where they get hundreds of comments and the threads resurrect every so often creating negative beta version feeling.

6 Likes

Unfortunately I must agree
I do see that you guys are working a lot to make this site appealing

But there is a lack of …smth… Don’t know exactly what: the police that looks like it’s broken even if you change it…, the multitude of giants icons, the avatar that take the third of the screen, my preferences that goes off if I clear my cookies, despite I’m logged with my name, the site don’t remember that I hate the “auto lingq system” so every whence in a while I must reconfigure that.
The whole site is not intuitive, frankly I don’t know if it’s worse or similar that the site before, yes the site is improving , they are excellent features like “ the feed” system.
But each time I come back to it it takes time to find where this or that is…

I guess that to the “non-intuitive” aspect lead to those fuzzy sensations

1 Like

I agree with you. I’m just like “what am I even supposed to do here now that i’ve registered?!”
You’re right about the videos. But seriously, who is actually bothered to study a video to navigate a site? Not to mention, the videos don’t even give straightforward instructions!

And the lessons, someone please tell me how they’re learning a new language by listening to vocabs? because all i’m finding is nothing but PAGES and I mean ENDLESS PAGES of vocabs! Sure, you can listen to them for thousands of times and viola, you’ll naturally understand the pronunciation and meaning of word. But wouldn’t the word/ language still foreign to you because you have no idea how to write or read it (languages like french that follow the english alphabet might be easier, but with asian languages like korean, chinese etc that uses characters, you’re just like “WTF” at the page long vocab list)
And I don’t find the alphabets of that language! Didn’t we all naturally start english from the alphabets then moving onto the phonic sounds?! So why is this site tossing us into a field of foreign vocabs without teaching us the basics of the basic like alphabets?!

And WTF is with these points and roses?!

I can live with the design although I totally agree that it is kinda horrible. What I can’t stand is the bugs. Some transcripts appear on the mobile version but not on the website, and vice versa. In the website some pages in the transcript are missing but the unknown words are still there according to the “word count”. To be more clear, as I read a transcript in which some paragraphs are missing, the software counts the unknown words in those missing paragraphs. So after I finished reading, my “known words” increases even though I haven’t even read them.
Example lesson: Login - LingQ

Man, I love your choice of words, very vivid descriptions of what we don’t like!

“the multitude of giants icons”
“fuzzy sensations”

Is LingQ a great product? Sure! Is it perfect? Definitely not. Do I get annoyed by its user interface’s quirks on a daily basis? You betcha.

What you point out is part of the problem. If a user wants to report a problem it is not immediately clear where they should go, hence they go to the forum. The forum is subdivided, but the standard view hides those subdivisions. Hence everybody is constantly exposed to the support forum. The beta version feeling does not stem from those comments but from the overall experience. (The “beta” of the new app feels a lot like alpha instead, with much of the functionality not implemented yet.)

I don’t have time right now to describe all the problems I have come across. However I would expect that standard use cases be straightforward for the user and that unnecessary clutter be minimized. A website that has to provide instructional videos on basic usage is doing it wrong in my opinion. I’m not even touching on accessibility issues.

7 Likes

exactly!

I am a co-founder of LingQ. LingQ is my passion, both because I want it to succeed and because I am one of its most active users. I have learned, to varying degrees, 7 languages at LingQ, and improved in others. I am not involved in development nor design, other than through the feedback I provide as a user.

I want to provide my reaction to the comments here. As background you may want to read two parables, which are relevant. The first is the story of Zuangzi’s crooked tree which I use in my book. To Huizi’s complaints about Zhuangzi’s philosophy, the philosopher replies that Huizi doesn’t know how to use the philosophy, in the same way that he doesn’t appreciate the value of the crooked tree. Please read it. The second parable is the Spanish story about the man and his son who take a donkey to the market, and tries to please everyone he meets along the way.

LingQ is two things:

  1. a place to find audio and text content, and functionality, which enable learners to develop good comprehension skills and a large vocabulary, the base for all language skills.
  2. a world wide community or people helping each other learn.

The site can appear complex to some, despite efforts to make it simpler. There is a lot going on. People who realize that learning will take place through a lot of listening and reading and LingQing, using content of interest, in other words, people who understand what the site is supposed to do, are most likely to understand the site. These people just plow forward learning their language. Nevertheless, I know the development team is constantly looking at ways to make the site easier to understand for a majority of people interested in learning a language.
At this point, I would agree that the way in which lessons are presented to the learner, and the ability to find what we want, is not ideal.I believe that the design and concept are excellent, but there are issues. I have reported some of the same issues to the technical team. Eventually we will have a library that is easily searched, but more important, a source of content from people who share our interests, and from our favourite sources of language content on the web. Please be patient.
There are issues with the time it takes for lessons to load. This is being worked on and I am hopeful that this can be resolved. That would eliminate the “annoying quotes” problem.
The cartoon figures, rewards etc. are part of the strategy of providing rewards, a sense of achievement and a pleasant study environment. We can take them or leave them. They don’t affect basic functionality. I enjoy the look and feel, but am not into the rewards personally.
The Android and iOS app are in Beta and there are still issues. Nevertheless, I find the iOS Beta is my go to form of using the site and despite some issues, it is powerful, online and off line.
There are those who prefer the classic view, and it is still there. Since going to the new version, however, the number of regular users has increased significantly. It was the right decision.
I don’t understand the last comment about listening to “vocabs”. There may be such lessons, but they are few. If you found a lesson like that, choose another one.
LingQ is a source of audio and text content and functionality. The writing systems of non Latin Alphabet based languages do require additional resources. I have learned Korean, and Cyrillic based languages, and had to look elsewhere to get started. Thereafter I have learned essentially at LingQ.
There may be inconsistencies between the audio and text, although I rarely find this. If it is reported we can contact the provider. If there is a major problem, lessons can be removed.

In an ideal world, LingQ would have so many developers and testers that all possible aspects of changes in the system are thoroughly tested before launching, and any modifications can be quickly implemented. Such is not the case. Maybe one day. Your patience, as well as your comments, are greatly appreciated.

11 Likes

With each iteration of LingQ, the web app becomes more difficult to use, becomes slower and buggier, and the design becomes more childish and silly. I know LingQ since many years. The test version with 10 free LingQs is simply unusable. If you want to know how well (or how badly) LingQ suits your language learning needs, you must spend 10 $. I did this several times, and my overall assessment is as written above. I still prefer one of the many free alternatives of LingQ because they are bug-free, run fast and the screen is not cluttered or wasted with silly stuff. OK - I have to look for texts somewhere else and I have no community, but I am in control of the app and my data.