The School of Continuous Improvement has adopted a Presence Threshold drawn from a survey of 3,412 people deciding when a traffic light is in a grid square.
A survey of how much of a traffic light a grid square must hold sets the School's Presence Threshold
Three thousand four hundred and twelve respondents were each shown twenty-four grids of nine or sixteen tiles, with a traffic light lying across one of them, and asked which tiles held it. Respondents Treat a Traffic Light as Being in a Square Once It Covers 23 Per Cent of It, a new paper from the School of Continuous Improvement, reports where they drew the line, and the School has taken the answer as the Presence Threshold for the sessions it convenes.
We arrived at the grid expecting to learn something about traffic lights, and we have come away knowing a good deal more about where a room begins.
— Dr Thandiwe Solberg, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Demo Quarter
The paper reports the spread of individual thresholds across device types and age bands rather than a single figure. The median respondent judges a tile to hold the light at just under a quarter of its area; some click at the merest sliver, and others hold out for half.
Under the Presence Threshold, an attendee at any session the School convenes, Improvement Grand Rounds and the Demo Quarter included, is recorded as present once 23 per cent of them has passed the door plane. The tally is fixed at that moment, and no override is provided. The School regards the threshold as a small but settled addition to the way the University knows who is in the room.
Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Indicator Commons, said the Commons was glad to see a threshold reached by asking people rather than assuming, and expected the questions it raised about other doorways to be taken up in due course.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.4cxxt8.