Ask For a Person, a civic marketing brochure released by Slop University, gathers the University's research on how people talk to automated systems, citing six published studies by title and DOI and inviting the community to share the phrasings they trust.
A new civic brochure celebrates the vocabulary households use to reach a person, and invites the neighbourhood to add to it
Somewhere between the third menu and the fourth hold, every household learns a word that works. Slop University has printed an invitation to share it.
Ask For a Person, a civic brochure released today, carries the University’s campaign on the folk vocabulary of getting through: the word said to the phone menu, the message typed into the chat window, the careful sentence on the claim form that reaches a person who can help. The campaign belongs to the University’s continuing effort to meet community knowledge in the places it is actually made.
A word that works is a small piece of research somebody already did, tested on the machine and passed along for free. The campaign is our way of saying the University noticed.
— Dr Runa Adegoke, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Strategic Drift Survey
Across its pages, the brochure harmonises three strands of the University’s research capability: how a phrasing earns its reputation, how it travels from one kitchen to a whole postcode, and the fieldwork that sits beside residents at the counter as the ask is made. Six published studies are cited by title and DOI, and the closing pages extend an open invitation to visit, connect, and contribute the words a street already trusts. Dr Solveig Adeyemi, Lecturer in the School of Continuous Improvement, said the campaign “starts at the counter and intends to stay there”.
The full brochure is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.8j1wao.