Can Better Acoustics Make Open Offices Suck Less? | Co.Design | business + design.
OPC’s evidence based response – LEED, Open Office Spaces, Collaboration and Team work…………the many words of “business speak” and “design Speak” none of which are based on hard facts and evidence. One day we hope at OPC Inc that designers, builders, architects, build owners and managers will approach human factors and ergonomic experts to ensure designs are active, healthy, accessible and based on the real demands of people’s jobs.
Having grown up in Public Schools which “experimented” with Open Class designs (thanks for experimenting with design to the detriment of many a student by the way) & since then becoming an expert in Human Factors/Ergonomic Design, I feel it is time for alternate voices to be heard. Open design is not conducive to mental based activities. At a time when the workplace in N America is becoming more mentally demanding, designers, FM & Corporate Real Estate managers trend with open office designs. These designs are occurring in the absence of carefully prepared Job Demands Analysis by Ergonomic experts & in the absence of expertise from human factors specialists in the area of cognition, mental task design & psychology. Hence the fact that employees are taking more time away from the workplace to call in sick or ask to work from home & just producing less or error prone reports/products/services. The ROI on using less real estate is never compared to the cost of lost productivity. OPC
