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Babble by Herman Miller: Privacy in Your CubicleIt was the 1960s, and Herman Miller shook the dust out of corporate America with a radical idea for interior architecture known as the open-plan furniture system, aka cubicles.
And now, some 40 years later, that same Michigan-based office furniture company is blazing new territory again, this time in hopes of fixing the biggest foible of all those opened-up, walls-be-gone offices that may enable communication, all right, but also put people spitting distance from one another - and turn coworkers into cohabitants.
Like one big (sticky) family.
The big problem: a lack of privacy. And specifically: voice privacy.
This month, Sonare Technologies, a newly formed Herman Miller company, planned to introduce something called "Babble" to 40,000 or so architects, designers and other trade professionals at NeoCon, the contract furniture industry's major trade show, held annually in Chicago.
About the size of a clock radio and no more forbidding to operate, Babble is a voice privacy device that makes it possible for people to have confidential telephone conversations in their cubicles - and not be overheard by their family of coworkers.
Or at least, not be heard in a voice that is decipherable.
"It multiplies your voice. I think that's a good way of characterizing it," said Bill DeKruif, president of Sonare Technologie
more: Babble by Herman Miller: Privacy in Your Cubicle
July 3, 2005 | Viewed 24,757 time(s)
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