FLW's Johnson Wax Factory, Racine, WI
Have you ever worked in an open office setting without any cubical walls? The closest I came was in 1997 at a 15 person company where the cubes were organized into groups of four. In that setting, when anyone entered our area, all four of us would look up.

Jeremy Birnholtz presented a very interesting paper at Group that discussed a study where he, Carl Gutwin and Kirstie Hawkey examined several 100% open office workspaces and the verbal and non-verbal negotiation people go through before initiating conversation. He talked about two concepts: “attentional legitimacy” (what are you legitimately allowed to look at within your co-workers workspace?) and “public displays of attention” (the acts you go through so that others know you are trying to get their attention). He talked about a 3-4 foot bubble that people hover within around your desk while they assess how available you are, before they approach you.

What I like most about his talk was how he highlighted that tools that have been built for managing awareness between remote colleagues have not taken into account that there is often a subtle, non-verbal, two-way negotiation going on between people to assess the availability of someone. If you are wearing headphones you are not available. But if you see your boss walk by slowly, looking over, you may take off those headphones and make yourself available. Both parties adjust their behavior to fit the environment and to signal to each other. How could you do that over an electronic mode of communication such as instant messenger?

Here is the paper:

Jeremy Birnholtz, Carl Gutwin, Kirstie Hawkey. (2007) “Privacy in the Open: How Attention Mediates Awareness and Privacy in Open-Plan Offices.” Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Organizational Computing and Goupware Technologies (GROUP 2007), Nov 2007.

* Image of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax Company Headquarters building, Racine, WI