This Study Suggests Open Plan Offices Make People Less Social

Hip offices are bright, open spaces with happy co-workers cranking away out in the open. In with transparency and friendly chatter, out with the Dickensian pecking order of isolating corner offices. From Mike Bloomberg to Mark Zuckerberg, the big guys have been tearing down the walls for decades. (It doesn’t hurt that the cost per square foot of open plan spaces is way less than the stodgy old alternatives.) Well, file this under surprising: In a new study, researchers slapped “advanced wearable devices” on co-workers, both before and after their company moved from an old school, office-dense office to a new open plan space; and it turns out that the volume of face-to-face interactions actually decreases by, um, 70%.

In short, rather than prompting increasingly vibrant face-to-face collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates and interact instead over email and IM.

Oops! The study does not suggest which office type gets people to move more, but that’s a question that Count.It may one day be able to help answer.