# Demo Quarter registration now turns on a painted line

> A School of Continuous Improvement paper reads a bakery's painted free-bun line as an assignment rule, and the Demo Quarter adopts a line of its own at the registration desk.

A line painted at a small child's height on a bakery's counter glass reaches the adult standing at the till, according to a School of Continuous Improvement paper released today. The University has carried the finding to its own registration desk.

> A showcase is a room of people deciding whether to stay for the second session, and we would like the desk to be where that is first encouraged.
>
> --- Dr Thandiwe Solberg, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Demo Quarter

The paper, by Doctoral Candidate Edda Nwafor with Dr Solberg and Dr Joost Nwosu, follows a free iced bun offered to every child who can stand beneath a mark on the counter glass of eighteen bakeries, and sets the adult's own purchase beside it. It reads the mark as a rule that sorts customers, tests the sorting against other heights on the same glass, and reports what the sorting does to the basket.

The Demo Quarter will now waive registration for any delegate who stands beneath a line painted on the glass of its registration desk. The line stays where it is painted, and the desk holds no discretion in either direction.

Ms Nwafor said the project began somewhere familiar: "I came to the University from uniform supply, where a line on a garment is always a line about a person, and a bakery counter turned out to be a comfortable place to stand."

The release reflects the School's continuing habit of reading the furniture of ordinary commerce for what it quietly decides.

The full paper is available from the University's research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.fk83l2.