Visibility Control for Supporting Workers using Blind-based Partitioning Devices

Open-plan offices encourage communication among office workers, but they also create distractions stemming from the movement, glances, and nearby conversations of co-workers. Partitions are often employed to mitigate these distractions, yet they struggle with achieving equilibrium between privacy and situational awareness. In this study, we propose a system of visibility control utilizing a blind-based partitioning device whose slat angles can be individually controlled. To demonstrate our system’s efficacy, we implemented a prototype of the device consisting of 48 controllable slats with servo motors, allowing visibility control of the front and both sides of the worker’s desk. Our accuracy test of the visibility control revealed that visibility from the user’s view can be controlled with an error of 6.4%. Subsequently, we conducted a user study that asked participants to design the shape of the partition under specific conditions of task and co-worker location. The results show that users want to change the partition shape according to the conditions and that using the device improves the subjective sense of task performance, comfort, concentration, and visual privacy in the video-summarizing tasks, but slightly reduces subjective comfort and concentration in the conversation tasks. These findings demonstrate a solid need for our system and established the usage guidelines.