Around seven out of every ten Americans who work in offices do their work in an open environment，defined as at desks without meaningful partitions （隔板），according to an International Facility Management Association survey. That is，if they even have a desk——workers may be assigned only a few feet of a communal（共用的） table. The open-plan office space trend，popularized by creative agencies and technology start-ups，went mainstream because of the belief that open-space environments support innovation. More nearness between employees，the thinking went，would create more interaction and teamwork，promote social interaction and urge productivity.
But in fact，purely open-plan offices have been shown to have the opposite effects，creating so much distraction（分心） that employees stayed away from each other. A study funded by Harvard Business Sehaol，the results of which were published last year，tracked what happened when a British company moved its employees from traditional office space，with offices with walls，to an open office. Face-to-face interaction became less——employees spent 72 percent less time interacting with their colleagues. Instead of talking more with each other，the employees put on headphones and began communicating by text and email. As digital communication channels surged， productivity declined.
Neuroscience also holds some clues as to why the tight quarters in communal work spaces——where workers are only given about half the space they were given a decade ago——are so hard to work in. "The human voice sets off the most powerful emotional response in our auditory（听觉的）experience. Voice above 55 decibels（分贝）—— roughly the sound of a loud phone call——causes measurable stress，" according to a Wall Street Journal article， "The Neuroscience-Optimized Office". "Even more troublesome are overheard 'halfversations'，in which the listener only knows about one side of a dialogue；our brains automatically imagine the other，" wrote authors John Medina and Ryan Mullenix.
But the solution，say experts including Newport，isn't to go back to putting everyone into offices with walls.
