The quest for good, quiet spaces: Evaluating the relationship between office noise annoyance, distraction, and performance

To facilitate office work performance, acousticians must design spaces that minimize annoyance from background noise, primarily from HVAC equipment, and reduce worker distraction caused by intermittent sounds, e.g., ringing telephones. Increasing background noise can mask intermittent sounds and mitigate distraction, but negatively affects annoyance. Additionally, some disrupting sounds, such as alarms, contain informational content necessary for workplaces. Balancing worker annoyance and distraction can be difficult since the definition of what constitutes a good, quiet space is yet unclear. The goal of the present work was to perform a literature review to inform ideal office noise conditions and develop an experimental procedure to test such environments. The review included papers about indoor environmental quality and the effects of acoustics on environmental satisfaction, job performance, and noise annoyance, as well as cognitive, neurobehavioral, and physiological measures that can quantify work performance. The results of the literature survey will be used to form the basis of a future subjective study. In particular, an experimental design will be discussed that aims to evaluate the effects of various simulated environments, reproduced using higher-order Ambisonics, on work performance, annoyance, and distraction. The data from these future studies will be used to investigate ideal office acoustic environments.