A new poster from the School of Continuous Improvement validates the office-plant watering agent's soil-moisture log against 14 weeks of observed kitchenette care, finding most of its "successful waterings" followed an unlogged hand top-up.
A 14-week study finds the agent's watering log holding flat across kitchenettes while pot survival tracks whoever's nearby to top them up by hand
Two in three of the “successful waterings” Slop University’s office-plant watering agent logs each fortnight turn out to follow a colleague topping up the pot by hand, ahead of the soil-moisture threshold the agent was built to act on. A new poster from the School of Continuous Improvement is the first to check the agent’s own record against what actually happened at the pot.
Dr Sten Okwuosa and Dr Thandiwe Solberg covertly tracked 58 potted plants across eleven shared kitchenettes for 14 weeks, logging soil moisture and leaf condition by hand alongside the agent’s watering record. The agent’s claimed watering rate held between 88 and 93 per cent everywhere, regardless of foot traffic; actual 14-week survival did not, ranging from 42 per cent in the quietest kitchenettes to 89 per cent in the busiest.
The instrument agrees with itself beautifully. It just isn’t the thing keeping the ferns alive.
— Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor, Impact Pathway Atlas
Dr Solberg, who convenes the School’s Demo Quarter showcase, called the gap “a clean instrument next to a curve it has stopped explaining,” and read it as one more instance of the School’s evaluation-ecosystem work turning its instincts on its own fixtures before anyone outside has to ask. Facilities’ monthly credit to the agent is unchanged for now; the School has asked for a line in next quarter’s report for whoever keeps the pots alive between readings.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.zi5oe0.