What's the point of Top of the Class?

I little while ago we announced the addition of Top of the Class to the RM Compare family. For the first time (we think anywhere) it is now possible to properly use Adaptive Comparative Judgement on a mobile device. But why did we bother? What's the point?

Focus on the user and all else follows

We talk to our users a lot - and I mean A LOT! We also monitor user behaviour across the platform through a variety of analytics (not in a creepy way). This helps us to better understand what we are doing well and what we might want to do better. As our insights have become better, the importance of mobile devices has become very apparent. However, our knowledge in this area is limited - up until this point RM Compare has largely been built for desktop environments. Getting our heads around how things might need to behave differently on mobile has been a 'head scratcher'.

Mobile first

Right now the current version of RM Compare is responsive - that is to say it does it's best to render properly for different devices. However the platform has not been built with a 'mobile first' approach. As a result, while it works on mobile devices the user experience is far from optimal. In contrast Top of the Class has been built from the ground up as a mobile experience. Hopefully you can appreciate this when you use it on your device. The learnings here will be most valuable when we make some substantial improvements to the main platform. We will be taking a mobile first approach with all future developments. Don't worry, it look and behave even more brilliantly on desktop, but by building mobile first we can properly increase accessibility for all users.

But it's a bit basic isn't it?

That's sort of the point. The key is to build something that has just enough functionality to deliver enough user value so we can learn where to go next. We know there is a lot we could do here but we need our users to help us (remember follow the user.....). So please keep using it and sending us your feedback. We look carefully at every single piece of user feedback.

So what next?

Right now we are running a series of Top of the Class sessions which we hope will engage a large number of users - you can join in at any point (see the Top of the Class page for details). Once we know a bit more we will start thinking about our next move. It's always the same process: Build > Measure > Learn.....repeat.

We all love ranking things

What are the top skills students need to succeed? What's the best homework excuse ever? What do people wish they had learnt at school? What's the nations favourite school subject?

The team at RM have developed Top of the Class as a fun way to rank everyday things - and demonstrate the same comparison process that makes RM Compare so powerful.

  • Uncover your own hidden preferences through a simple comparative process
  • Contribute to the wisdom of the crowd - your efforts are added to everyone else's
  • Compare your personal rank order with the global one.
  • Check back to see how the global rank changes in real time as more people participate

Join from your mobile at top.compare.rm.com

Get started!

Top of the Class ranked results and QR code