Ah, the open-plan office, that shining example of egalitarian design, the great leveler of the corporate caste system. Just one problem: there’s no privacy. Open-plan offices are distractingly noisy. Their intended purpose is to boost collaboration and productivity, but these designs have actually done quite the opposite. Research shows that open-plan workspaces damage employees’ attention spans, stress levels, short-term memory, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction. A 2003 Herman Miller study on privacy issues cited “overheard conversation” as workers’ biggest complaint. In fact, office chatter is such a common performance-killer that the outcome even has a name: “the irrelevant speech effect.” And yet 70% of U.S. workplaces still embrace an open-plan environment.