Scenario: I'm having an impromptu meeting or phone call and I need to check if there is a free room right now to use so we can have our meeting there.

Scenario conditions:

Types of meetings assumed to not involve pre booking rooms in calendar :

Unplanned, as part of a conversation with 1+ people IRL
Unplanned phone calls requiring privacy or minimize disturbance
Short or expected to be short (less than 1 hour?)
Meetings with no set location, attendees check rooms prior to meeting

Solution requirements:

Solutions should provide a method that is "better" than the ones listed in order to be adopted. "Better" might be defined as Faster, Less intrusive, Less embarrassing (0 barging in on clients), More convenient (not requiring physically being near room)

Methods to replace or augment:

Current behaviour/methods of checking if a room is free when the need is immediate:

👣👀Walk over to room and look for open doors
👣👀Walk over to room and look inside room for people
👣👀 Walk over to room and peer through frosted glass if door closed to determine if they can be kicked out (not clients)
👣👂Walk over to room and listen for voices if door is closed
👣👀Walk over to room and see if there is any notice posted on door
👣👀Walk over to room and look inside for computers, workshop materials, coffee set up (artifacts of presence)
👣👄Ask someone near the room if it's free

Availability:

How can immediate room availability be defined? Each item has differing confidence levels to the condition being true, multiple factors together may give a more accurate indication of available.

Open calendar slot
No one standing in the room
No one sitting in any chairs in the room
No one putting anything on the table
No one casting onto the TV
No one writing on the white board
Door is in open position
No sound in room
No artifacts in room marking it being held or in use
No notices on room door marking it being held

digitalist-canada / casper