Monday, October 21, 2002 - An overly chatty neighbor lurks, waiting for an opportunity to make small talk with a busy colleague.

Glancing through the open side of a 5-foot-high cubicle, he spots his prey and strolls in. Work stops.That's one of the drawbacks of life in a cube farm, the standard working environment for millions of office-bound Americans."The ability to do good heads-down work is challenged. It's easy to interrupt," said Fred Dust, who designs office space for IDEO, a design firm based in San Francisco.Some researchers have found that the cubicle is a deterrent to office productivity. Closed offices are better, but still not ideal, they say.Since the 1990s technology boom began, businesses have been abandoning the cube warrens for a more open design, said Alexandria Lanuk, president of ATL Interiors/Corporate Environment of Stamford, Conn.The cube maze isn't going away. But in the long run, there will be fewer cubes and more flexible office space. Businesses aren't as formal today as they were in the 1960s, when cubicles exploded on the scene, Lanuk said.

Many employers - particularly those in high technology - want a more casual office where they can optimize productivity, she said. In many offices, an open floor plan with clear sight lines and no walls leads to the greatest amount of productivity among workers, researchers have found. The open office permits co-workers to read subtle behavioral cues that indicate when to ask a question or start a conversation. Interruptions aren't the only drawback to cubicle life. The thin walls do nothing to keep out the noise of jangling telephones and other office hubbub. And just try to make a private phone call. So the ideal open office would have rooms where employees can work in private or make personal phone calls, experts said. The average cube dweller may pine for an office, but the closed-door environment can lead to more isolation and less work-related communication. Originally intended to give some privacy while leaving room for communication between employees, cubicles have failed to do either well, Dust said.

For those who can't wait for their employer to redesign the office, a Denver firm makes a folding cardboard door that at least gives an illusion of privacy. The $19.95 Cube-a-Door is a 5-foot-tall cardboard panel that folds like an accordion. It is emblazoned with the phrase "Please Do Not Disturb." Flexible Designs founder Craig Dinan came up with the idea in 1996 when he was a cube occupant. He had a pesky neighbor. "I came in early to work, and this co-worker came in early as well, but to chat, not to work. It was more like a monologue than a discussion," he said. He and a buddy talked about the need for more privacy over a pizza. They wound up folding the box their pie had come in and the Cube-a-Door was born. Mike Danner, a computer programmer at Galileo International, has one braced across the entrance to his cube. He puts on a set of headphones and suffers few interruptions while the door is in place, he said. But it doesn't deter everyone. And it's impossible to screen out all the office noise. "I don't think you can eliminate all of it unless you put a roof on," he said.

The office cubicle, Dust said, is like the "spork" - a combination of fork and spoon. "It's not a great spoon, and it's not a great fork," Dust said. "The cube was supposed to solve issues of privacy, but it doesn't." Companies like Michigan-based office product designer and manufacturer Steelcase Inc. are getting better at recognizing what their clients need, Lanuk said. Consultants can tell a client who expects to pack the room with cubicles that he needs a smaller number of cubes, desks for an open work space, and a series of small conference rooms, Dust said. Some rooms should be small enough for one employee to take over for a period, he said. Others should be large enough to accommodate meetings. Employers, who want to monitor employee activities while giving them an illusion of privacy, like cubes, said James Katz, a Rutgers professor and author of the book "Communication: Social and Cultural Study of the Telephone in American Life." "The cubicle represents the idea that the worker is supposed to be cowlike, bovine," Katz said. It is cheaper to install a maze of cubes than to build walls.

And the cubicles can be moved to another building if a business relocates, said Mitchell Kirsch, vice president of New York City-based Cubicles.com. But if the ideal office is built to the needs of its occupants, the result could be radical. Most people will choose a location to do their work that might surprise even them, Dust said. Children who were given laptops for one study, which involved IDEO, didn't put them on the tables that were also in the room. "They work under the table, or work with the tables around them," Dust said. "People are very creative where they work." A bunch of college students armed with laptops will run into each other near a bank of elevators and take over the hallway, working on the floor, Dust said. There are rooms in a building that IDEO designed for Stanford University that can be used by one person or opened up to accommodate 50. Cube dwellers lack that kind of flexibility.

Even though the furniture can be moved and rearranged, phone wires and computer hookups keep workers tethered to their desks. Dust expects an explosion of change in office design when wireless technology improves. But in the meantime, he has a whimsical idea of what cube life could be. He helped design a high-tech cubicle for Dilbert, the hapless, comic-strip shlub created by Scott Adams. The Dilbert cube includes a motorized shoe polisher and computer monitor for keeping tabs on the boss. For those who aren't near a window, another monitor shows daylight so the occupant can track the passage of time. A self-timing guest seat has a built in switch that rings the cube phone giving the inhabitant an excuse to get rid of the visitor. It's cute, but not a solution to the cubicle's shortcomings, Dust said. "The solution is about giving the right kind of diverse options, providing enough shared resources that allow employees to do different kinds of work," he said.

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