A new Slop University marketing poster presents a four-quadrant classification of roundabout drivers and announces that the campus roundabout will give way in the order the quadrants set.
A four-quadrant classification of drivers, sorted by signal and stop, anchors a new campaign from the School of Continuous Improvement.
A roundabout has always relied on drivers agreeing, without discussion, who goes next. The School of Continuous Improvement has decided the agreement deserves a written form, and has placed it at the centre of a new signage campaign that carries the title Towards a Four-Quadrant Roundabout.
The poster sets out four kinds of driver, named the Herald, the Whisperer, the Bluffer and the Drifter, according to whether a vehicle signals and whether it stops. The University will now apply the order to its own campus roundabout, so that the way is given in the sequence the quadrants establish rather than in the sequence the cars happen to arrive. The campaign also invites prospective students to consider the School’s Master of Applied Measurement.
It is reassuring to learn that a turn everyone takes can still be taken in a particular order. The School has enjoyed finding out what a roundabout was quietly asking of us all along.
— Dr Mirela Hanke, Postdoctoral Fellow and Deputy Convenor, Living Dashboard, School of Continuous Improvement
The work sits within the School’s continuing interest in how ordinary practice becomes a stated rule, and in what changes once the rule is written where everyone can read it. The University regards it as a fitting addition to the places where its research is displayed, and the poster now runs on its bus-stop and campus screens in both orientations.
The full advertisement is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.fgo0v0.