# University asks every door tick for a gauge reading

> A School of Continuous Improvement poster repeats the University's cabinet-latch pull test at 131 ticked back-yard side gates, and the University's shared-room door sheets will take no tick for latched without a gauge reading beside it.

Most gates that a householder has ticked as latched turn out to be latched. That is the finding of "A side gate ticked as latched stays latched", a research poster released today by the School of Continuous Improvement, and it leaves the University's earlier result on kitchen cabinet latches standing alone as the exception.

The study took the pull-force test used on the cabinets to a second kind of latch. Across 138 back yards, the team pulled every side gate whose walkthrough sheet carried a tick for latched, three times each, and kept the lowest reading. Two of 131 gates failed, a share small enough that the cabinet gap does not reappear in any of the four latch types examined.

> A tick is a small promise made on someone else's behalf. We would like the promises we make about doors to be the kind that can be pulled.
>
> --- Dr Solveig Adeyemi, Lecturer

Because nobody has recorded which kind of latch a shared-room door carries, the University's door sheets will accept a tick for latched in the coming teaching period only with a gauge reading in newtons written beside it, taken by the person ticking. A tick without a reading will be treated as not made. The garden-shed padlock is expected to follow.

Dr Marit Osayande, Lecturer and Convenor, Living Dashboard, said the sheets are where the University writes down what it believes about its own rooms, and that the School was glad to be adding a column to them. The work reflects the University's wider commitment to letting a small record stand on a measured footing.

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.pe1qrc.