Anecdote time: I once attended a meet-up at a tech company nearby. After the event, and following up on a previous discussion, one of the locals showed us a display they setup in their open space to show the current db level. The sensors were fully functional and the numbers changed as we clapped our hands and everyone agreed that it was kind of smart and well made.<p>But there was an issue. The system's raison d'être was to alert everyone when a set threshold was crossed, in an attempt to keep the noise low and productivity high. The problem was that the threshold was based on some ideal that was wholly incompatible with an open space full of developers asking and answering questions, discussing algorithms, etc. The alerting part of the system was triggered so often that they eventually disabled it, rendering the whole thing quite useless.