I think you mean that the analogy is hard to make in real-life where you can't control other people ;-) Which is true, but I was trying to shift the focus on th

I think you mean that the analogy is hard to make in real-life where you can't control other people ;-) Which is true, but I was trying to shift the focus on the problem instead of where it happens to occur. Granted, for open-office plans it generally makes people feel like they can talk loudly because it's a space full of people and that's what you do in such spaces. But it's still the distraction (and noise), not the space itself. The ease of moving around is not available if you put walls everywhere. But that 'problem' isn't really seen as problematic, so the comparison becomes "loud office vs. quiet office" instead of "distracting but roamable office vs. silo'ed office". At that point we are of course trying to value one person's wish to roam as much as another person's wish to not be distracted.