Queue Labs
The twelve-week teaching schedule: what happens in each queue lab, what to prepare, and what leaves the room.
Each Queue Lab takes one argument from that week's lecture and tests it against the SlopU Office of Everything's case file — producing either new evidence for that argument or a decision the file carries forward to the next week, on the way to the final redesign.
Watch a queue
FILE / WEEK 01A close observation exercise on a real waiting system, kept separate from any assumption about why it works the way it does.
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
Find what the average hides
FILE / WEEK 02Work the Office of Everything's own ticket log against its "average wait" memo, then apply the same check to the system you are tracking yourself.
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
Recompute with and without the outlier
FILE / WEEK 03Rehearse the Queue Autopsy's core technique on the Office of Everything's data, then apply it to your own observed system before writing it up.
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Answer the complaint on FCFS's own terms
FILE / WEEK 04Work out exactly what the students' association complaint is asking the Office to change, and who would carry the cost of that change.
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
Test the Quick Enquiries draft for starvation
FILE / WEEK 05Apply the Office's draft shortest-job-first notice to a busier ticket log and check whether the longest case ever gets served.
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
Compare three policies on one log
FILE / WEEK 06Run FCFS, Quick Enquiries and the Priority Lane against the same ticket log, then choose and defend one policy for the Office of Everything.
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
Design what the wait sign should say
FILE / WEEK 07Replace the Office's frozen "estimated wait: 5 minutes" sign with an honest form of words, given only the information the counter actually has.
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Specify the evidence for "stuck"
FILE / WEEK 08Work out what a person waiting in the Thursday display-board incident could actually have used to tell a stuck queue from a slow one.
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
Account for the 15% who left
FILE / WEEK 09Test what unrecorded departures leave unknown about waiting, and check your own system for the same measurement gap.
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
Audit the Priority Lane's usage release
FILE / WEEK 10Read the Office's released Priority Lane dataset against its stated purpose, and state plainly what it does and doesn't let you conclude.
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
Trace the worst day back to one decision
FILE / WEEK 11Work through the Office's compounding-failure incident and argue for the single earlier design decision most responsible for how badly it went.
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
Redesign the counter and prepare its defence
FILE / WEEK 12Bring the semester's decisions together into one redesign of the Office of Everything, and prepare to defend each choice under questioning.
Week 12 · 10 May 2027