“The need for privacy sometimes—at work as well as in public—is as basic to human nature as is the need to be with others,” explains Donna Flynn, director of Steelcase’s WorkSpace Futures research group. “The harder people work collaboratively, the more important it is to also have time alone—to be free from distractions, apply expertise and develop a solid point of view about the challenges at hand.
“People also need privacy to decompress and recharge.” (360 Magazine, 2014)

Noise and lack of speech privacy can create a workplace full of distractions. Offering employees the option of doing focused work from a Cocoon Pod or Booth (pictured left) minimizes visual and noise stimuli and makes work easy with localised power and a work surface for a laptop or writing pads.

The Cocoon walls or screens reflect sound, and the soft panels also absorb or dampen the sound to reduce the echo (reflection of sound waves from a surface back to the listener). Let’s explain this concept in another way; if you had to think of a squash court and the ball represents a sound wave. When you hit the ball it will bounce several times off of the walls (hard surfaces) before coming to rest. If you should pad those walls with foam the ball would slow down dramatically and bounce fewer times before coming to rest.