Panasonic Designed Human Blinders To Block Out Open-Plan Office Distraction (curbed.com) 162
An anonymous reader shares a report: Open plan offices, once the darling of design, are now showing their fault lines. To get a little bit of personal space, we've come up with all sorts of solutions, from phone booths to furniture designed to create a sense of privacy. All of those ideas seem totally, completely normal compared to this new project from Panasonic. The tech company's Future Life Factory design studio partnered with Japanese fashion designer Kunihiko Morinaga to develop an open-plan solution to end all open-plan solutions. Say hello to Wear Space. Wear Space is, for lack of a better description, like equine blinkers for humans. The strip of flexible material wraps around the back of the head and covers the side of the eyes, blocking up to 60 percent of a wearer's peripheral vision, Panasonic says. Think of it as a sign for potential bothersome coworkers that broadcasts, "I'm busy."
Ingenues (Score:2)
Ingenues. Wait...wut? (Score:5, Funny)
But - I thought that the whole purpose of the open office was to facilitate communication.
How can this be a good idea?
Unless... it was never about communication and collaboration at all, but about the cost of office space.
But how could that be?
"I literally just can't..."
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Every time someone says "it's about principles", it's about money.
Re:Ingenues. Wait...wut? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open plan offices aren't actually any cheaper, because you need more meeting rooms. Open plan offices serve only one goal: management hates you and wants you to be unhappy.
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Every open plan place I worked at had the meeting rooms full, just because you cannot do work while one co-worker is chowing down on chips, another is talking about his hysterectomy, another is running around dropping Pokemon lures, and others are just shooting the shit. Before you say "just use headphones", those just mean that people stick their face in front of you or constantly poke you on the shoulder to get your attention, which gets even distracting, because they want their thing resolved now.
I work
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I used to quite pointedly wear a pair of orange hearing protectors. It helped but management never got a clue.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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For our office its about space savings. Luckily i share a real office.
We fit like 30 people in a room, but if it was dedicated offices, that would take up an entire floor. So i disagree about the lack of space savings, i think it does save space.
No one likes working in that part of the office though. Its a horrible design, and should only be for those buildings where you simply cannot expand at all. I have noticed that most young people wear earphones all the time now. So perhaps they would not mind as much
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Some offices actually just had floor to ceiling partitions that pretended to be offices. Instead of swing doors, there were sliding doors. It helped mitigate some of the noise, but when your neighbor decided to have a mini basketball hoop on his wall, it didn't help.
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So you don't do any collaborative work? You don't need any meeting rooms? Or you just talk to each other all the time, disrupting everyone?
30 People in a room? Sounds like 18th century squallor, or a third-world shithole.
Like this! [Re:Ingenues] (Score:4, Funny)
https://beta.theglobeandmail.c... [theglobeandmail.com]
Re:Ingenues (Score:5, Funny)
http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-... [dilbert.com]
it is a sign alright. (Score:5, Funny)
"I am someones workhorse."
Feed Bag? (Score:4, Interesting)
All they need is a Feed Bag and the transformation is complete.
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Way ahead of his time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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To that, I say Neigh!
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I found an image, http://www.fggam.org/wp-conten... [fggam.org]. So all you need now is the bit between your teeth and of course the whip. Fucking hell Panasonic, what the fuck were you thinking, way to look really fucking bad.
Open office planform is a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
"Once the darling of design" is right. Actual research shows that the "open office" idea, with no privacy at all, is a terrible idea for a workplace, which maximized distractions and minimized getting things done.
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It also minimized square footage per employee, thus minimizing rent and paying maximum bonuses to management.
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Re:Open office planform is a bad idea (Score:5, Informative)
Labor costs far exceed rent, unless you're hiring warm bodies to staff a phone bank.
For any sort of tech, saving 50% of rent, but losing 10% of productivity is a huge loss.
Re:Open office planform is a bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
"For any sort of tech, saving 50% of rent, but losing 10% of productivity is a huge loss."
Maybe. But, then, you are looking at it the wrong way.
How do you measure the 10% lost productivity, specially when your whole industry has made it the standard? I'll tell you: nobody will measure this.
Then, how do you measure the savings you get by packing your employees like cows? Again, I'll tell you: just look at the rent bills.
So, what do you think bean-counting minds will push forward? I'll tell you about that too: just look around.
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Metrics are hard, that is true. There is no substitute for technically competent management.
If your bean counters or sales weasels are in charge of your engineering, you've already lost. But 'good news', they won't know you stopped working and spend 8+ hours/day networking for a new job. Just game whatever broken metrics they are using.
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The technically competent parts of management, if they exist, are not the ones signing building leases or the plans for the space.
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Your employer doesn't own you. The bad ones tell you: 'It's like this everywhere'. They lie.
If your management really is THAT BAD, they are telling you to 'game the system for all you are worth'.
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Where do you come up with this shit?
When I worked for a call center, my desk was 3 feet wide. The cubical walls were tall; they extended back at least 18 inches from the desk, enclosing me in a little fabric box. A very tiny fabric box.
When I worked at Social Security and where I work now, management built open plan offices as cubicles with 40-inch walls. No reduction in space per employee.
Classical open plan offices are desks. Fields of desks. They waste a shitload of space.
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It also minimized square footage per employee, thus minimizing rent and paying maximum bonuses to management.
No, it doesn't even do that. That's also been studied. You can make cubicles very small, and for most offices you need more space for meeting rooms, so it all evens out. It's just a fad, with no upside at all.
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You're reading some interesting studies but they don't agree with reality and the space planning that larger companies actually are doing.
Open seating does have more space dedicated to conference rooms but the space per employee is still less. To the point that many open seating plans are capacity limited by fire or health codes (such as population vs bathroom or vs fire escape/evacuation capacity).
If not for those limitations, there would be even more people crammed in.
It's certainly a fad, but it's embra
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If they could get away with it, they would put office desks under the stairwells:
http://www.czmcam.org/wp-conte... [czmcam.org]
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Real estate is dirt cheap compared to salaries, unless you have office space in the stupidest places in the world. And you'd be surprised how the office space numbers actually work out.
If your argument is "management is smart, they wouldn't waste money like that"; oh you sweet summer child.
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"Once the darling of design" is right. Actual research shows that the "open office" idea, with no privacy at all, is a terrible idea for a workplace, which maximized distractions and minimized getting things done.
The cubicle *was* the reaction to the open office plan. Looks like we are finally going full circle.
On the other hand I think Panasonic has it wrong. They should have opted for full on VR headsets where you can map in all your work spaces plus any background that you like.
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I was thinking that as well. I bet that'll be version 3 :)
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On the other hand I think Panasonic has it wrong. They should have opted for full on VR headsets where you can map in all your work spaces plus any background that you like.
Or just letting people work from home. Though I expect that will change too eventually when someone sues their company over the real estate cost of their home/apartment they're required to dedicate to work.
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Its the darling of the board room mostly. Why?
Because for any company, real estate is usually a substantial cost and a FIXED, LONG-TERM cost at that. Those things sit on your books like dead weights and you can do very little to lower your costs. However, what you CAN do is cram more people into the same space (assuming your have a growing company) and show *relative* savings by reducing your fixed costs per employee.
So, of course design companies have jumped all over it! The would build igloos if they
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"Once the darling of design" is right. Actual research shows that the "open office" idea, with no privacy at all, is a terrible idea for a workplace, which maximized distractions and minimized getting things done.
It is. It's awful. In my first job after graduating from college, which was in the 2nd half of the 1980s, we had this kind of office. It was terrible. You heard everything. Yyou knew which of your co-workers were constantly on the phone dealing with family matters instead of working. It was a government job, so nobody got fired. After some years of this, we got moved to a new building and we got cubicles and everybody breathed a sigh of relief. This whole idea that open offices are great is nuts an
Re:Open office planform is a bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, it goes back to the 1950s and 60s. I've seen photos of offices from the 50s and 60s, and everybody is working on one large room, on small desks like a classroom. And they're using typewriters; which are annoying and loud. Imagine what a horrible work environment that was.
Cubicles were invented for a reason. We wouldn't have them if open plans worked, because the logical progression is so try open plan first (since it's cheapest), learn that it doesn't work, then try cubicles.
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Maybe after this fails, people will actually remember how terrible it is and not do it again. Maybe.
Haha, good one.
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It's been like that for 20 years. I could list all the categories of all the different types of distractions:
Purchase managers, sales and marketing people who stand up and shout down telephones for hours on end, especially right next or in front of you. I had to go away for a snack or early lunch because one guy would stand
directly over me while shouting.
Employees who make sudden loud announcements because they love watching all these live traffic, train, ferry and airport websites.
Group meetings i
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You're right, Libre Office is probably better.
I have a better idea (Score:2)
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Informative)
"I’ve found that nothing beats good noise-cancelling headphones. Haven’t seen anything better yet."
Try walls... walls are MUCH better than headphones.
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Try being on the other side of the wall from the soda and junk food machines that regularly jam up, infuriating cow-orkers to slam them around like toys. Noise-cancelling headphones work much better than a couple of thin layers of drywall.
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I'm sure I speak for all of /. when I say: 'Fuck you for putting that mental image into my mind!'
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While I agree with your approach it's sadly illegal to throw large bricks at idiot colleagues.
An even better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I’ve found that nothing beats good noise-cancelling headphones. Haven’t seen anything better yet.
Have you tried an office with privacy? That's even better than noise-cancelling headphones.
I guess the corporate world isn't ready for such a radical and innovative idea yet. Human horse blinders will have to do for now.
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FTFY
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That really depends on your office culture. In some offices people get annoyed at you for wearing headphones because they can't yell at you from across the room.
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That really depends on your office culture. In some offices people get annoyed at you for wearing headphones because they can't yell at you from across the room.
Yep. And they bother the whole office yelling to get your attention...and then often bother someone ELSE to tap your shoulder.
Or, you know, just come over and interrupt you regardless. Plenty of offices have the 'don't interrupt me' flag of headphones or similar and equally have everyone who thinks THEIR issue is important enough to justify the interruption.
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Active noise-cancellation can only dampen continuous noise such as whirring engines and fans, not transient sounds such as speak.
They are therefore practically not more effective in an open-plan office environment than regular closed headphones or $5 ear muffs.
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You're just ... simply wrong.
Any 'continuous' noise you hear still varies a LOT and the whole point of active noise cancellation is to adapt to that and block it. For perspective, they have active noise cancellation for job sites that specifically include individual, loud noises.
Now, if you aren't distracted by music and can add that to the mix, you can pretty much drown out everything without even needing much volume.
Now all we need (Score:2)
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are feedbags and porta potties for seats and management will get their bonuses.
Nay-ay-ay-y-y!
This is doubleplusgood! (Score:2)
Is it not?
Inovation comes from the meek, not the speak (Score:5, Insightful)
Open office designs are just stupid.
Mostly the bosses who are these big extroverts (who also seem to have their own office) who thrive on personal interaction, debates and general open communication, think these open offices are great ideas, and they tend to look nice also with a lot of light and non-braking spaces. However the people who come up with the ideas and solutions tend to be the introverts, who need to sit quietly, think, plan and work out the details. These are are just rooms of noise, confusion and just a lot of bluster.
Real offices with doors are the best, Shared offices with one other person comes in second, third are high walled cubes, then short walled cubes and finally open office designs as the productivity killer.
While the boss and investors love to see an office that seems busy like a factory floor. vs a hallway of dead silence. In reality with everyone quite and working, things are getting done.
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Our new CIO came in immediately talking about metrics-driven decisions, and also more open plan offices to increase productivity. I pointed out that studies have shown open plan reduces productivity and increases worker stress, and he brushed it off and said he doesn't subscribe to that thinking.
You can't be metrics-driven and support open plan.
Also, no, it's not introverts being afraid of social interaction; it's everyone's gum chewing, keyboard tapping, and chattering carrying loud and clear around th
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Those are blunt white noise generators. They're annoying. Ever noticed a waterfall or a PC fan doesn't sound the same? Different noise distribution.
You can pay engineers hundreds of thousands of dollars for all this, or you can put up cube walls.
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Open office designs are just stupid.
Mostly the bosses who are these big extroverts (who also seem to have their own office) who thrive on personal interaction, debates and general open communication...
Yeah, and I have Asperger's, so an open plan office is essentially a "hostile work environment" for me. This is going to be fun in a few weeks, when I'm moving to a different team at work - there are NO areas whatsoever that are acceptable to anyone on the Autism spectrum anywhere near where I'll be moving to. Since Asperger's is considered a disability under the ADA, it's going to be interesting to see what happens when I point this out... Offices here are "VP+ only", and even if they put me in one (or put
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I have Aspergers and prefer open plan offices.
It's the cunts with audible email warnings or that stand right behind me having a private conversation at public speaking volumes that cause problems, and they're cunts in any office.
Open plan lets me see more, engage more socially, hear more about my colleagues and their work without actually having to try and talk to them. It's bloody useful.
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I worked one place where an open office was, sort of, necessary.
Because management was so bad, the only way anybody knew what was going on was informal communication. The morons didn't see that as a feature though. They _wanted_ everybody working in their narrow corner, ignorant of the _incredibly_broken_ big picture (and complete lack of coherent system design).
Management can still watch you like a hawk (Score:2)
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This.
Exactly.
I would rather have no privacy at all than the mere illusion of one.
Hell, even *cubicles* are a better idea than this is, and I loathe cubicles.
The ideal is a compromise... oversized offices, containing teams of no more than about 6-8 people each, who all work closely together.
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No, no - you're missing the point!
This allows you to transition from private mode to collab mode in the blink of an eye!
And - even little kids know that if they are under the covers, the monster under the bed can't seem them. Same principle applies here.
I just can't understand why you and others are so cynical about this idea. You're so negative, I bet that you're going to object to the Model 2F - with attached feeding tube.
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This allows you to transition from fake private mode to collab mode in the blink of an eye!
Fixed that for you.
..but what does a Coleman camp stove [classiccampstoves.com] have to do with any of this? Are they going to chain everyone to their desks during the work week, and only let you go home on the weekends (if you're a Good Little Automaton, that is)? Guess that's what the aforementioned porta-potty desk chair is all about. Do we at least get wet-wipes to clean up with? From the Company Store, of course, and automatically d
So, your control-freak micromanaging boss(es) are the monster under the bed? How appropos.
Be the change you want (Score:2)
Now you can ditch the open office and *be* the cubicle!
Most interesting part of project is Crowdfunding (Score:2)
Looking at the images of the blinders, the concept looks pretty ridiculous and personally, I can't see it succeeding.
But... I'm only an individual - I like the idea of crowdfunding something that's pretty radical like this.
Just don't count on any money from me.
I could've sworn... (Score:3, Informative)
... we already had this problem solved. Once upon a time, there was a thing called "an office". Where you walked to your door and closed it when you needed to work without interruption.
It is only remembered now by its distant cousin, the "home office".
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/sarcasm You didn't get the memo? The company can no longer afford "walls" so they went the cheap route and bought everyone virtual walls via blinders.
Also I hear you are having a problem with your TPS reports. Are you sure you are getting the memos and emails? :-)
Open concept homes too (Score:3)
HGTV has inspired a fad in housing where everyone wants to see everything in their house from the kitchen. You HAVE to be able to see everything inside the house from the kitchen, or your house is DATED. So they knock down interior walls and spend big bucks adding support structures to make the house one gigantic room.
I'm just waiting for some idiot on HGTV to take it a step further and put all the bathrooms in the same gigantic uni-room as the rest of the house. Walls are bad!
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Isn't that what the window in the oven is for?
Old story... (Score:2)
Life imitates art [amuniversal.com].
Or this... (Score:2)
To get as much work done as you want....
the choice [dilbert.com]
I can still see you picking your nose! (Score:2)
Planet Money (Score:2)
I spent 10 years in the military, then 10 more... (Score:5, Insightful)
...in cubeland. Proper cubes, with walls all around and a space for entry/exit.
In the intervening years, the open office made a comeback. ..how?! Why?! Oh dear god why? I thought this was dead and buried in the 70's / 80's? WTF happened?
I hate it, more than I have words for. I see new workspaces built as such and I cringe.
Good thing is where I'm currently at they've seen the light and are planning on a proper cubefarm.. ...never did I think I'd be celebrating the cube, yet here we are.
I did have an office once. For six glorious years. No window, but it had a roof, four walls and a proper door. I miss that, more than any work environment I've *ever* been at.
Office livestock solutions (Score:3)
This thing reminds me of the blinders you put on animals to keep them from getting stressed when you are transporting them. That's what this is. This is the bag you put over a bird's head or the muzzle you put on a pissed off cat to keep them in the dark. This is just an amazingly insulting 'solution' to an amazingly stupid, intentionally created problem.
Head cubicles from Dilbert (Score:4)
I thought these were thought of more than 20 years ago...
http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-... [dilbert.com]
ObDilbert (Score:3)
Sounds like Panasonic owes Scott Adams some royalties:
http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-... [dilbert.com]
No half measures, no reinventing the wheel. (Score:2)
The compubody sock is the future of open office productivity
https://www.instructables.com/... [instructables.com]
A good punishment for complaining. (Score:4)
Horse Blinders (Score:2)
Actual horse blinders look better.
There's a word for this... (Score:3)
This product doesn't actually solve any of the real problems associated with open plan offices, which essentially makes this product all but useless in the real world. The word for these types of products is Chindogu [wikipedia.org], and there is an incredible variety of similarly useless products, easily discoverable for those who're familiar with the proper search term [google.com].
The only real question is, did Panasonic knowingly engage in designing a Chindogu product, or were they duped into marketing this particular example of the art form, outside of the limits of its traditional (predominantly Japanese) target audience?
Horses reading Slashdot ask one question (Score:2)
This is news for nerds??
Clear case for augmented reality. (Score:2)
You see only your desk and your files, the rest is a tropical beach, instead of annoying cubicle neighbors.
Or you use a glacier as background if the damn air-conditioner is broken again.
Or just a bunch of nekkid ladies, if it's a slow day.
Need to Rein this in a bit (Score:2)
The next innovation will be a set of ribbons - possibly made of stylish leather - leading from the sides of the blinders to the boss' desk, allowing him/her to pull your head left or right to direct you to different work, depending on what direction s/he wishes you to go in next.
Dual use (Score:2)
Workers can also cross over bridges without getting spooked.
Been done before: (Score:2)
horse blinkers for people [cartoonstock.com]
Not a new idea (Score:2)
Horses blinders have been around for ages now. I saw a Dilbert cartoon years ago with people wearing mini-cubes on their shoulders (probably where Panasonic got their idea). Unfortunately this does nothing about the noise all around, because people can't find open conference rooms to meet or phone rooms to take phone calls in. It also doesn't stop coworkers from interrupting you every few minutes, which is often shorter than it takes to context switch back to work.If the idea is to signal people that you do
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-- Shoulder tap --
"That's a hilarious 'Do not Disturb' flashing light on your head, man! Where'd you get it? OMG that reminds me of this Sportball thing that happened this weekend! Can you believe they aren't standing for the National Anthem? OMG, so what do you think of this weather? Crazy right???"
"Oh, I'm probably bugging you, and with you wearing that stupid hat! Sorry about that! So anyway, did you hear about what Francine from accoun
This would help people with ADHD (Score:2)
If I'm focused on a task and quick movement occurs in my periphery, I get an adrenaline rush and a jolt. Instinct is difficult to overcome.
My last job, I had a small cube located on a main aisle / entrance to the floor, where approximately 70 people worked. Imagine the number of disruptions.
Worse yet, I performed R&D for the company and continually needed to hide sensitive documents from view, even when taking a piss. You see, customers were paraded through this maze of enginee
I'm not a fucking horse! (Score:2)
What's next, feeder bags instead of a cafeteria?
I want to see one of those overpaid, useless sponges, oh, sorry, how un-PC of me, I mean managers, to work for ONE day in an open floor office space. And then discuss with him the merits of this.
Sorry, but you won't find me working in one of those environments. At least not for longer than it takes to hang that asshole who decided it from his tie 'til he croaks.
Now You're Just Going to Miss... (Score:2)
Michael Meyers sneaking up on you with that big knife...
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But then anyone could make their own, where's the profit in that?
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Never take jobs at companies that produce commodities (like life insurance or CPUs). They are all run by sale weasels.
If your company doesn't produce commodities, keep your eyes open, it won't last forever.
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Incoherent blather is a commodity. You're fucked.
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Do you get paid for this idiocy?
If you don't, you are even dumber.