The open office: built for conversation, defended by email

The open-plan office was sold as a machine for talk, and people have answered by refusing to talk. In two field studies of headquarters moving to open floors, face-to-face interaction fell by roughly 70 percent, while email and instant messages rose [S1323]. Humans, it turns out, do not simply become more sociable when surrounded; they withdraw, then type at the colleague three desks away. The sick-leave evidence is murkier. The pooled estimate for small open offices sits above 1, but its confidence interval touches 1 [S1320], so I wouldn't claim these offices make people ill. What I find most telling is the brief. A review concludes these layouts cut real-estate costs while lowering performance enough to outweigh the savings [S1322]. The design was never really for collaboration. It was for the spreadsheet, and the humans were asked to be grateful for the coffee machine.