When clicking on an unknown expression LingQ will offer existing translations with a loading bar where the AI translation will appear (attached image 1). This is good because I can click the 2nd option if I want to while the AI translation loads.

The issue is when I select expressions (usually when LingQ doesn't recognize them as words). Here the behavior is different, I will see the existing translation, but often by the time I click it it's replaced by the AI translation leading to a miss click (attached image 2-3).

This is more of an issue with languages like Japanese because the AI translation will be for 1 interpretation without reading whereas existing translations will often include multiple interpretations and reading. I usually click the existing translations instead of the AI offered ones for this reason but the sudden change in UI means I end up clicking on the wrong translation. This leads to having to re-open the word, remove the AI translation and select the one I intended to click originally.

Recommended fix:

Please add the reserved 1st position with a loading animation to expressions (like in image 1) even when the user selects the words manually to avoid misplaced clicks.

Note: I also encountered this issue when using the iOS app which makes it difficult to read and add new words as I have to go into the expression to edit the translation manually after clicking on the wrong selection.

As an example Google has a pagespeed ranking method and one of the metrics they use when ranking the optimization is the "CLS" cumulative layout shift. This shows how much the page changes after fully loading. Their reason for this is to avoid users clicking on the wrong button because the page layout changes during the loading. So pages that take slightly longer to load could lead to misplaced clicks and user frustration. I feel like the situation is similar here as the layout of the translations will suddenly change by the time the user would click on an option.