Plantronics has announced Habitat Soundscaping, an acoustic management service for open office spaces.
The service couples software with nature-inspired audio and visuals in an effort to mitigate distractions due to speech.
Plantronics built Habitat Soundscaping on “biophilic science” principles, which describes the innate tendency of humans to seek connections with nature.
The service provides natural water sounds and uses a combination of natural audio of real waterfalls, or virtual displays of serene landscapes.
In an effort to reduce distraction, the service senses disruptive, intelligible speech and adjusts the natural sounds in the surrounding work zones. It is designed to acoustically incentivise certain behaviours to help very loud talkers to keep their voices down. The system also automatically analyses its performance.