Rocket Languages

I have been using Rocket Spanish for about a month now. I took 3 years of Spanish in school and I have used many language learning apps. I have used Duolingo (of course), Busuu, Babbel, Memrise, Pimsleur, Mondly, and a few more. The Good: Rocket seems to be the most comprehensive app I’ve used so far, which is good. The content is excellent (so far), it has a good mix of exercises, so you learn each topic in a variety of ways. That’s excellent for learning. The Bad: 1. Design: The app design is pretty dated. It is not user friendly or aesthetically pleasing. Things you need to press are awkwardly placed. The buttons and design is ugly. The app would be 1,000% better if they kept ALL the content, but just hired a better person for UX and UI design. Duolingo for example has terrible content, but it is very fun and easy to use. Rocket is the exact opposite. Excellent content, but poor user experience. 2. White Lady: Half the content in Spanish is by a man who seems to be a native speaker. That’s good. The other half is by what sounds like a white woman who is still learning to speak Spanish and knows as much or less than I already do. All the content should be by native speakers. Her bad accent is often annoying. 3. Slow/Repetitive: Most lessons have 100-200+ audio buttons you have to press to listen to something, then another button you have to press to record something. Many, if not most of those are for ONE WORD!!! Making it a VERY slow, repetitive process. Instead, each play button should play at least 3-5 words. That would play all the same content, but in HALF the time! Same for recording. Don’t have us record ONE WORD AT A TIME… 200+ times! Group them together. Make the process more efficient. Also, the recording and playback in other apps like Duolingo, Busuu, Memrise, Babbel, etc. are fast and user friendly. The Rocket recording and playback is slow which makes using the app annoying. I’d honestly rather use an app that has B+ content with an A+ user experience than an app with A+ content and a C- user experience. Rocket, please improve your app design 🙏 4. Placement Test: Most other language learning apps have a placement test you can take and then they will place you in an appropriate level in their app. Rocket doesn’t have that option. I have emailed them to ask if there is a way to do that and nobody replied. I wasted 6 months using Duolingo because I wanted to start at the beginning, only to realize I already knew everything through their first 5 levels of content. I wasted months of my time before I finally used the feature Duolingo has to test yourself ahead to an appropriate level for what you already know. Once I jumped ahead to a proper level, I actually started learning something. Busuu also has that feature, so does Speakly, and I think Babbel does too. I am really spinning my wheels with Rocket going over countless hours of content I already know REALLY well. Please, create a placement test 🙏 You have EXCELLENT content, make your app design equal to the quality of your content. There is no excuse for your terrible design. It looks like cheap software you’d buy in the 1990’s. Look at your competitors and model their design. You don’t have to copy it, but just look how much better it is. More people will want to use your app if it is fun and enjoyable to use. I’m honestly so frustrated using the app, I don’t like using it, I don’t want to use it any more, I just don’t want it to go to waste. So I force myself to use it. Where other language learning apps, I enjoy using.

So far this is my favorite out of all the language apps I’ve tried for German.