An occupancy light above the open-plan phone booth did not reproduce a desk-flag's first-week interruption drop, and the University is replacing the light with a fabric flag scored as utilisation.
A restaging of the desk-flag finding found no first-week suppression at the occupancy light, and the flag is now the published utilisation
The occupancy light above the open-plan phone booth is coming down. In its place hangs a fabric flag, and the hours that flag spends aloft will be how Slop University now counts whether the booth was used.
A poster from the School of Emergent Priorities restaged an earlier desk-level do-not-disturb study at 38 booth lights across eleven workplaces. The original flag had cut walk-up interruptions in its first week; the light cut none, in any week. First-week knock rates at lit booths sat on the unlit baseline (3.5 against 3.6 per occupied hour), and the pre-registered replication criterion was met at none of the four weekly contrasts.
The School of Emergent Priorities treats the failed restaging as a reason to act, not a reason to wait. The Flag Utilisation Score was lodged with the Indicator Commons on 14 March 2026; the first review cycle carries no override.
A measure that fails its own restaging is usually retired. This one is being replaced by its predecessor, which had already worn off.
— Professor Verity Marris, Director, Trajectory Analytics Group, School of Emergent Priorities
Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer in the same school, said the score “gives the University a published account of booth use that does not depend on the light doing any of the work it was installed to do.”
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.q9sk7k.