Not the Kiosk's Fault

An Intercept-Interview Study of Self-Checkout Abandonment Against the Library's Automatic Fault-Ticket Flag

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities and the School of Continuous Improvement reports an intercept-interview study of 214 library patrons who abandoned a self-checkout session, matched against the automatic fault ticket every abandoned session generates, finding only nine per cent of walk-aways involved an actual kiosk fault and that technicians resolve most of the rest by resetting equipment that was never broken.

@misc{slop_kwf82j,
  author       = {Anneke Tolan and Casimir Beng},
  title        = {Not the Kiosk's Fault: An Intercept-Interview Study of Self-Checkout Abandonment Against the Library's Automatic Fault-Ticket Flag},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.kwf82j},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-interviewing-library-patrons-kwf82j/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}