I worked at a defense contractor in Utah that, at the time, had close to 4k employees. Needless to say, this business consisted of massive warrens of cubicles.

I worked at a defense contractor in Utah that, at the time, had close to 4k employees. Needless to say, this business consisted of massive warrens of cubicles. I was employee #3 in a new Ux/Human Factors group and the first thing that we did was collaborate with Facilities group to design an open workspace where a joint team of Ux and programmers would work to build customer-facing software products. I had spent much of my grad school working on designing team-based workspaces on behalf Herman Miller and Steelcase during the 1990s, so this was a great way to incubate some of those ideas. We designed several of these workspaces with both personal and shared work areas, including tables for lunch activities (mainly speed chess) and meetings. There were a lot of marker boards and everyone had double the desk space than they had in their cubicles. Both projects were huge successes and still in use to this day. Here are a few of my observations: 1) Facilities was NOT on board but we had the managerial support to push the project through. 2) The first six months was like being in a fish tank. People constantly stopped by to observe us and ask questions. 3) Similar open-offices started popping up throughout the organization. 4) Some of them failed. 5) Ours did not. I think that some of reasons that we could be effective in an open-office as a group of cats and dogs (designers and engineers/programmers) were as follows: 1) We only recruited talent that was willing and able to perform in this environment 2) We respected the desire of team members that didn't want to work in this environment, but we kept them close 3) There was nearby private space that could be checked out as needed 4) We got to design the space 5) We were not crammed together and there was implied privacy. For example, nobody every faced another person. We had portable markers boards that could be used as impromptu dividers, and if someone had headphones on, that was a pretty good sign that they were not to be bothered. 6) Nobody dictated how we were to use the space at a group or individual level 7) There was trust 8) We were able to design, develop and iterate faster due to being in close proximity. The intimacy of the workspace worked well with our daily scrums and short design/development cycles. In the previous model, teams were often not colocated and it wasn't uncommon to jump on shuttles and bicycles to get to meetings. tl;dr The space was designed by its voluntary occupants and it improved the effectiveness of the team and the end-products as a result.