Polyspeaks – Chat With People Who Speak Other Languages

3 thoughts on “Polyspeaks – Chat With People Who Speak Other Languages”

1. 1) Visit https://www.polyspeaks.com. What is your initial impression of what you see? Are you immediately drawn to click any of the buttons? Why or why not?
   I really like the home page and all the different languages. It seems very inclusive.  I like the colors, the design, the hot air balloons, etc… It’s very inviting in my opinion. Like it’s going to be a happy, fun place to make friends from all over the world!
   I wasn’t immediately drawn to any buttons.  I tried clicking on some of the images thinking I’d be able to see where some of your users were from but it didn’t work.

   2) Were you able to start a chat session intuitively?
   Once I was signed in, I was able to get started easily.  However, out of all the languages I selected, I only found 1 online user. One of the languages I chose was English, and there were 1605 users who spoke English but only that 1 user was available.
   Other thoughts:
   I wish there were a way to create an account/profile on the site and not log in by way of another site.  Also if I could review someone else’s profile, I’d be able to determine if I have anything in common with the person and decide if I want to chat. Maybe I want to talk to someone who is in my same age group or likes the same music, movies, video games, books, etc that I do.  I personally would feel a little shy clicking on someone not knowing at least a little something about them.
   Is there a way to delete your info?  If I’m signed out, and I don’t know when/if I’ll be returning, I don’t necessarily want to be seen as “offline.”  I’d just rather not be listed at all when I’m not there, and then be free to come back and be available when I’m able.  It gives the impression that there are a lot of people to chat with (or potentially a lot of people to chat with) when there really may not be.  There’s no way to know if the person is just offline right now or if they signed in once and never came back.  Maybe I’m being too picky but I was surprised to see 1605 English-speakers and only 1 was online on a Saturday afternoon!  I guess there were actually 2 including myself. Lol!
   I saw this in your privacy policy: “When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or languages you know. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.”  How can I visit anonymously?  I didn’t see any instructions on how to do this.  Instructions on how to visit in this manner should probably be put on the main page as well as in the privacy policy.  I didn’t feel like I had a choice but to register non-anonymously to test out the site.  Now I see my Facebook picture is on the home page of the site although I am signed out.

   3) If you’re a language learner, do you feel more comfortable practicing using text chat, or video chat?
   As a language learner myself, I am definitely more comfortable with text chat. And that has helped me quite a bit in the past.  You can think about what you want to say before you say it.  You even have time to grab a dictionary if you’re not sure about something. With live chat you don’t really have that luxury.  It’s probably good to have the option, I’m sure some people would love to hear the right pronunciation of a word they may be unsure of, and be forced to think and speak on their feet!

   4) How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like livemocha.com and busuu.com?
   With livemocha.com I didn’t like the fact as soon as I went to their page, I was being asked to create an account almost immediately before having a chance to learn about the company then make my decision as to whether I wanted to sign up.  I didn’t like that as a first-time visitor.  Luckily, they have lots of info available in the About Us section that would make me feel more comfortable about signing up. I didn’t feel “forced” to create an account on your site.
   With busuu.com they also give you the option to learn about the company first before signing in.  I don’t get a “community” feel that I get from livemocha and your site.  I see that they do have a chat area but it doesn’t appear to the focus of the site. There are lot of self-study options.  So, I think your concept is a little different from theirs.
    

2. Using Mac OS 10.7.2 with Safari and Firefox

   1) Visit https://www.polyspeaks.com. What is your initial impression of what you see? Are you immediately drawn to click any of the buttons? Why or why not?
   First impressions of the site is that it is a social networking/chat site. The display is eye catching, neatly organized, though it does not 
   I am not drawn right away to click on any buttons. Part of the reason is that the only buttons that I see are the ‘sign-in’ with Facebook and the language options at the bottom of the page. There is nothing else that really catches my eye that says ‘this is a place you want to click’. This is mostly because I want to learn more about the site before getting involved in it, and I usually look for a ‘FAQ’ or ‘About’ section.
   
   In the end, I signed in with Facebook.
   2) Were you able to start a chat session intuitively?
   Setting up was easy, as was the process of selecting language and skill levels. The chat options links you with people who speak the same languages that you do, displaying who’s online and who is not. The ability to start a chat seems very easy and straight forward.
   3) If you’re a language learner, do you feel more comfortable practicing using text chat, or video chat?
   I like a mix of both. As a former ESL teacher it is one of the best ways to develop the full aspects of language skills. However, speaking is more important (but writing instills more on the memory, and for languages with a lot of rules helps one remember them)
   4) How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like livemocha.com and busuu.com?
   I have never heard of either one.

   Additional Comments:
   A feature that is missing is the ability to mark yourself down as someone who is willing to ‘teach’ a language, versus someone who looking to learn or practice a language. I am a native English speaker, willing to help others with their language skills. In that regards, it would be nice to be able to let others know that you are willing to chat. At the same token, it would be nice to be able to indicate that you are highly interested in learning/practicing a certain language more. This is important for another reason: not everyone who is a fluent speaker of a language is interested in helping a person learn/practice that language, as they may be more interested in practicing another language.
   Example:
   Native English Speaker: willing to teach/help others practice.
   Native French Speaker: not willing to teach/help others.
   Intermediate Russian: actively looking for others to practice with.

   Along with that, having the ability to search for people willing to teach/help others practice a language along with the ability to search for people looking for someone to practice with would be nice. 

3. 1) Visit https://www.polyspeaks.com. What is your initial impression of what you see? Are you immediately drawn to click any of the buttons? Why or why not?
   The design is good. The background design does a good job in retaining the first time user’s interest for some time, so that he/she can make a decision on whether to stay in this site further or not. My initial impression is that, it is more of a social networking site rather than a language learning site. The homepage itself appears too bright for me. I feel that the blue-colored theme and the white-colored post strike a contrast rather than blending with each other. ‘Welcome’ in various languages(I understood only Hindi), is a good idea.
   Yes. I am immediately drawn to click the button ‘sign in with facebook’. Mainly because, it is located just below the title and beside the caption.
    
    
   2) Were you able to start a chat session intuitively?
   No. I didn’t find anyone online for any language I searched: (People seeking to learn)English,German,Spanish,Russian,French,Tamil,Hindi,czech or telugu. The time when I tried this was 7:46am(UTC+5:30). Also, I would say the design here is good. Though the initial search displays everyone seeking a language(including people who are offline), there is an advanced search criteria for searching people who are online.
    
   3) If you’re a language learner, do you feel more comfortable practicing using text chat, or video chat?
   I am a German learner at the beginner level. Till I cross the intermediate level, I will be comfortable using text chat. However, once I decide to move to the expert level, I will need video chat for sure, to listen to pronounciations and improve my accent.
    
   4) How do you think the site compares to other similar sites/competitors like livemocha.com and busuu.com?
   I have not even heard of these sites before. But once I opened both of these websites, I feel that busuu.com is far ahead in the race. They have a video tour and testimonials, and unlike livemocha.com, they offer a glimpse of their homepage before asking you to login. They even have a video tour for each language. It looks more like livemocha.com is desperate to get users. So, My ranking of all three websites goes like this.
   I.   Busuu.com
   II.  Polyspeaks.com
   III. Livemocha.com
    
    
   Recommendations
   1. It is good that you use the option ‘login with facebook’ so that people need not enter all the details about them. However, some people may not want to login with facebook. So, I highly recommend a signup button without using any of the social sites.
   2. In the ‘What languages you know’ form, the sucess message that appears once i click on ‘update’ is not so prominent. I ended up clicking on ‘save’ 4 times before noticing the success message. It would be better to close it automatically after displaying a fading success message for 2 seconds, rather than waiting for the user to close it.
   3. It would be a nice idea to include practice lessons.
   4. A testimonials section is highly important, as in every website, immediately after reading about the services they offer, I go to the testimonials page.
   5. You can take a video of people chatting, and include it as a video tour to your website.
   6. If there is any tool to measure my growth in learning any language, that will be really useful.

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