A new Slop University paper scores shopping-centre directory boards on a five-level maturity model and finds the top levels sit farthest from the entrance, a result the University applies to its own campus map boards.
A five-level dot maturity model tests 43 shopping centres, and the University re-sites its own campus map boards to match its findings.
A directory board is read for a few seconds and then left standing for years, and the School of Continuous Improvement has turned its attention to what those years do to it. The Directory Dot Maturity Model, set out in a new paper, gives every board a place on a ladder from Dot Absent to Dot Attested and asks whether the place means anything to the shopper in front of it.
Forty-three shopping centres were scored, and 172 shoppers were sent to find a named shop. The paper reports that a centre’s level travels with the distance between its board and the nearest door, and that the time a shopper takes to find the shop stays where it was at every level.
A board is a small promise about where you are, and it is a pleasure to see it examined with this much care.
— Dr Torun Ezeigwe, Senior Lecturer and Director, Master of Applied Measurement
The University has taken the finding as a reason to look closely at its own campus map boards, which are now placed by the same ladder and reviewed each quarter. The work reflects the University’s steady interest in the small instruments people rely on without noticing. Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Mirela Hanke adds that “every board in the study told us something, and we are grateful to the centres that let us stand beside theirs.”
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.vqb8kx.