Room acoustic design of voice booths in open plan offices

摘要

Considering high noise levels in open plan offices and workers' lack of concentration, small enclosed rooms — so called voice booths - are being widely used in order to provide privacy and to be used as an online and offline meeting spot for one or two people. This type of usage demands a high-quality acoustic field and due to its reduced volumes, this characteristic is still unknown. A previous study has shown the usage increase of voice booths in Brazil and presented modal distribution analysis, coloration frequencies analysis, results of measurements in situ and subjective tests performed in 24 existing voice booths. Even though it was possible to conclude that reverberation time combined to modal analysis could be the most effective parameter to evaluate the acoustic of voice booths, the main goal of the study was still not achieved. So, the first purpose of this study is to validate the measurement method presented previously. And its second goal is to expand the studies in this field in order to determine parameters or guidelines for the acoustic design of voice booths.