A new Slop University research poster surveys lap swimmers before and after a public pool installs a digital lane-rotation display, and finds the self-reported rate of asking a lifeguard barely changes.
A six-month, three-pool survey finds the share of lap swimmers who still ask about lane rotation barely moves once a digital display goes up
A digital lane-rotation display now hangs on the wall of three Slop-University-monitored public pools. Whether lap swimmers actually consult it, rather than the lifeguard on deck, is the question a new Slop University research poster set out to answer.
Dr Joost Nwosu and Dr Mirela Hanke, both of the School of Continuous Improvement, surveyed 412 lap swimmers on deck across six months — three before the display went up, three after — logging how often each patron had asked a lifeguard about lane rotation that session. Self-reported asking held at 68 per cent before installation and 66 per cent after, a gap the pair’s model treats as noise rather than signal.
A board on the wall changes what information is available. It does not appear to change who a swimmer decides to trust.
— Dr Mirela Hanke, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Continuous Improvement
Complaints about the display’s glare and mounting angle rose through the first fortnight after installation, then settled alongside every other measure the study tracked. “The lifeguard was never really competing with the sign,” said Dr Nwosu. “We just hadn’t checked.”
The School of Continuous Improvement folds the finding into its wider case files on measurement systems that don’t quite reach the behaviour they’re built to shift.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.i2ulci.