Big monitors make you more productive?

Thanks for the reminder. I have several monitors (not to mention a new desktop) but due to convenience/mobility work almost exclusively on the laptop. Stupid, but true.

Is it your big monitor that is making your blog suck more as each day passes?:p

Yes. A must have for developers. I can be productive without one.

Total size is really what's important and how you use it.

I've just been forced to change from 3 15inch to 2 17inch monitors at work and it has reduced my productivity and forced me to change the way I operate.

On the 3 15inch screens I had the various apps we use spread out in a certain way so that I had quick, easy access to everything I needed without having to minimise or overlap anything. Now, I am forced to double up on just about everything.

Although the actual number of pixels I have to play with has increased the physical layout on only two screens prevents the best use of those extra pixels.
Probably two widescreen monitors rather than the standard 4:3 would improve the situation.

I'm going to have to get a third monitor back.

can't

yes, I have 3 at home... and 1 at work. It's killing me, but they won't justify giving me a 2nd monitor. It's weird that the developers get 1 but the graphics people get 2..

Mihir: actually, ever since I left Microsoft I've been using my Tablet PC with a 1025x768 screen. I haven't started using my new Mac screen yet, just hooked it up and now I gotta go on the road. So, if my blog gets better or worse next week, that'll be your answer!

Of course, if you think my blog is crappy and a big screen makes me more productive, what does that get you? More crap! :-)

I still don't buy it, especially coming from "a French consultant hired for a study sponsored by Apple which evaluated Apple’s 30-inch Apple Cinema Display".

Especially multimonitor setups; I certainly believe they make you feel more productive (if only to justify the cost) but I don't see it; we have several of these 'I need more monitor people' at work and they don't magically outperform their peers.

Incidentally, they are the same people that request 6 Gb of RAM and sometimes a 300 Gb external hard drive. They are 'power users' and somehow their computer is always at fault (one of 400 identical models).

Anyway, I laugh at their ineffectual attempts to justify such an expense and then ask for their manager's approval. When none is forthcoming I send them away empty handed. I love my job.

BTW, slashdot at +5 http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?thresh... has some hilarious comments.

Michiel: if this were the only study out there, I'd agree with you. But I've seen numerous studies and talked with researchers at Microsoft Research who did their own research. There's a reason why Microsoft's VP has three large screens on his desk.

Sigh my 2407WFP is improving my wife's productivity since I loaned it to her. Here at work I've got a 2007WFP as well as my laptop's screen and I wouldn't go back to a single monitor setup.

Got to agree with Robert here. Right now, I'm installing Office 2007 into Vista in a Parallels VM on my inherited Apple 23" display, sharing space with Entourage, running Apple Remote Desktop, an Remote Desktop Client session, and Safari on the laptop screen, along with about 4 chats in iChat. There's no WAY i can function at that level with only one screen.

I made a quite good writeup on this subject some months ago:

http://brilliantdays.com/buy-a-bigger-display/

"It took me some time to get used to it, but then something happens. You start to use tools faster and better, you can put things you need to have around open next to what you’re doing. You don’t have to scroll as much, and can use your eyes and your amazing brain to find information fast by scanning over text and visual information."

What gets me here? Hope, that I will see the same kind of posts I use to see on this blog few months ago.

I still *do* hope that. Lately your blog has gone down the dump. Just an honest opinion.

Michiel,

Power users may need more than one computer rather than more monitors. If they are "power users" chances are they will be crunching numbers that may require working through the night only to find some IS guys didn't post the auto updates to everyone. If they are doing analysis with the same machine, chances are good the other word processing folks will never reach the level of computer heat generation your power users are approaching. Stay cool.

"Send them away empty handed" is not a good way to support. Root cause analysis would indicate an easy fix for power user issues.

Sounds like great cost saving ideas from IS might be in force reduction. Hope the big dogs are reading these posts.

Your power users also may be exceeding supports ability to understand what needs to be fixed. Those without the authority to say yes should never be given the ability to say no. Just ask them, I am sure they would be glad to give you ideas on how to fix the issues. Fastest way to get someone angry is to ask them a question they can not answer. Just a thought.
Besides, "it's not my job." Put in a ticket with the help desk. LOL

Mary Czerwinsi and her group at Microsoft Research are experts on large display interfaces.

The definitive peer-reviewed paper on measuring productivity improvements (from 2003): http://research.microsoft.com/users/marycz/Inte...

A longer list of empirical research is here: http://research.microsoft.com/users/marycz/

There's great stuff there about diffierences between men and women in spatial tasks on displays, mapping to 3-D, how to design knowing that there are multiple monitors, etc.

P.S. Bigger is better.(3 Screens)
the ideal is to have two computers, one for numbers, one for what the rest of the folks(users) use computers.
They may not be used "all the time". However, less than one week of cost savings (not including overtime)would justify the purchase and the cost of other screens/computers.
Nike Phase 1

Mr.Scofield,

Great links. The larger screens are great for many applications. What is needed is another study on how to reduce eye strain and fatigue. Remember Mom saying don't sit so close to the TV?

Mr.Schofield,
Sorry. missed the h

Cool work for Mary C and Dar Pa;)

Boring? I don't think so. Keep up the good links and conversations Robert.

It's pretty undeniable that having larger and more monitors makes you more productive. What we're really talking about here is real, but small values of productivity. If having a dual-monitor setup increased a persons productivity by 15 - 20% would you see that as "outperforming" others; no, a change that small would be swallowed up in the natural variations of peoples abilities.

Secondly, monitors are DIRT CHEAP in comparison to a professional's time. You can get a decent 19" monitor for $250. If their annual salary is 50,000 a year they'd have to be half a percent more productive to justify the cost.

@Russ Henry: I was being sarcastic. They are not 'power users', they barely qualify as 'power idiots'. But I guess by your comments you are so deep in the corporate blah that you would not know or notice. Root cause analysis, indeed.

I on the other hand am intimately familiar with what these users do all day. I have the logs. I have the history. The only thing these users need is a good kicking, and a better work ethic.

I'll have you know that with 90% of the user base I get along great; it's those 'power users' (easily identified by comments starting with 'but at home I have...') that annoy me.

For things video editing, two or a big monitor, are not only very productive, they are requirements.

I think the reason people are skeptical is just the simple fact that-- if someone wants to get their work done quickly, they will get it done no matter if they have a relatively large or small monitor.

There are of course benefits to working on large monitor, in terms of ease. These are common sense, and people should use larger monitors because they want to, and not because some study shows they'll be more productive. Of course, employers need to be aware of what helps their employees, but there is that point again, at which the size of the monitor doesn't matter.

And at some level its what you get used to. A lot of people feel uncomfortable using notebooks, because the keyboards are smaller. But using notebooks for a long time, I find regular keyboards too large, and am clumsy using them.

Of course if you think in cognitive terms, one of the aspects of a compressed keyboard is that the distance between keys is shorter. If you are adapted to making short, quick movements, this is a benefit. -- I also draw, and its easier to draw with both unity of form and precise details on a small scale, because you are dealing in a tighter space.

Something is similarly true for large monitors. After all, even though you see more of your windows at once; you also have to move your cursor more to go from window to window. And the interface elements are smaller. Hey--what happened to Fitt's Law ? ;) I bet nobody here or anywhere who harps all day about how all-important Fitt's Law is, complains how large monitors violate it.

Seriously though, if I extend my experience to this example, you could see how doing drawing or illustrating could be harder on large monitors, depending on what exactly it is you're doing. Of course, in that case, you just shrink the window!

But there are those windows management issues. I understand how large monitors are nicer to use for some purposes. But still, I have to agree, its hard to justify an expense for things like programming work or document editing.

Fitt's Law is not affected by the canvas space in a meaningful way. As well, a larger monitor doesn't create smaller window controls, that's the resolution of the monitor and is not tightly coupled to the physical size.

(My 23" cinema display and my 17" MBP have nearly the same resolutions)

Having worked around far too many designers to count, two monitors or one *big* one is most definitely NOT a hindrance, especially in pallete - happy programs like Photoshop, Illustrator and Painter. Having a screen with nothing but the work you're doing is not a minor thing.

As far as programming work, sure, if it's Cobol in a 3270 emulator, you can do well on a single 17" CRT. You start getting into things like Visual Studio, Xcode, Eclipse, and other modern IDEs, that second monitor becomes a rather serious productivity enhancer.

Well, I am talking from my own experience and understanding. I know that some things are better to do on a smaller scale. In many design applications, that would mean at least shrinking the size of the window or having a lot of white space. And in that case you are moving from the area of focus a long way across a large monitor.

We -are- talking resolution, or at least desktop space, because we're talking about having more space on the screen.

And it does involve Fitts law at least in the way that Fitts law says that the proximity of two things together affects productivity.

But personally I think Fitts law as meaningful in any scientific, formulaic, appliable way (which is the way its phrased) is BS and easily undermined, and I have wrote elsewhere why. Fitts law is generally just a political tool people use to support one interface (.. MacOS) and not an end-all or not necessarily even useful when thinking about design.

sorry i meant to also say that its not just a single application taht can be sized down, but also multiple windows where its easier to work if theyre close together; which you have to work to do on a larger monitor.

now its not a big deal to do this and its not a big deal to even work with windows farther apart in these cases; but for a lot of work where its more pleasant to use a larger monitor its not a big deal to use a smaller one.

in either case, the work gets done; and the productivity is up to the worker.

of course there are some situations that are different, naturally

Brian, again, go use Illustrator on a 12" screen. Enjoy the extra work required to hide palettes so you can have some actual space for your work.

I also find it interesting how you use and discard Fitts' law depending on if you think it supports or doesn't support your position. Considering that the tendency of Windows users to maximize windows, something noted not just by me, but by the Office designer team, so that the menus function much closer to the way the Mac OS menubar does, (that's not the basic reason, it just works out that way), I'd say Fitts' law is a pretty damned reliable way to evaluate designs.

I've yet to find anyone who said "No, I don't like the extra space of a larger monitor. Please take this 23" LCD and replace it with a 14" LCD. 12" if you have one." In fact, if you filter out complaints about physical space taken on the desk, (a real concern with CRTs, not so much with LCDs), I've NEVER heard anyone complain about a larger monitor because "there's too much space", and I've been doing IT for a long damned time.

No, its just its silly for most users to not maximize a Word window. Its not that its necessarily easier to work like you do in a Mac with the menu bar at the top; there's no reason to not have the full space available--especially with heavy interface elements like toolbars that are more visible with more space. Its the same with other programs.

As you say, having the menu bars appear in the same place as OSX just happens to work out that way. How does that support Fitt's law then?

Say you want a Word document to appear on the screen metrically the same size as when you print it out. You have a huge monitor (for argument, 60"); so this makes you shrink it to a size with a lot of space around the document, in a way that does not look good. In this case, someone will want to use Word unmaximized; I would bet you money.

I wasn't 'supporting' Fitt's law, I think its narrow. I was using it to point out one way that it is narrow; that holding it to an absolute would make the claim working on a small screen is more productive; when its not an absolute.

But its not just a matter of Fitt's law not being absolute; the only time it even gives meaningful measurements is in specifically set up tests. In day-to-day use, Fitt's law is completely meaningless as a law; because the utility and productivity of an interface becomes wrapped up in the -logic of the interface-, and things are easier when the interface makes sense, and harder when it doesn't. Its not just that these other elements conditionally override Fitt's law, Fitt's law completely dissolves from any practicality at all, because there is no room for it when considering everything else.

As an abstract measurement Fitt's law isn't meaningless. But as a way to evaluate the goodness of designs, it -is- meaningless. Every time you think you want to invoke Fitt's law, there's a better more meaningful explanation. Like with maximizing Word.

John, and no, to give you an example, I'm not interested in using a 60" monitor to do my work, I really do prefer a normal sized monitor that gives me more focus. Ya, 60" is an etreme example, but you're talking as if larger space is always better. Its not just in extreme cases that you can make the judgement that it isn't. Whether it is 23" or something smaller is a matter of what makes sense. I prefer doing work on a notebook, though, which typically have smaller screen.

Btw, of course its not good to have toolwindows in your way when designing. But there are cases where you'd want what you're designing in a smaller space. The only point of bringing this up is to make a point that a large amount of space doesn't help every single utility; not to convince you people should use smaller screens.

My primary comment, though was whether it really is a justifiable cost for a workplace to get a larger monitor. If you're as large a company as Microsoft, it doesn't matter.

... I don't want to belabor what I'm trying to say, but here's a more every day example of why you don't always want interface elements at the top (as opposed to viewing a Word document metrically correct to print size):

You have a small sized video on a stream. You don't want to use the full screen for the interface, you don't want to maximize it. That's why they appear in resized small windows. The same thing for small videos in media player, you don't want the interface full screen. And editing on small sized bitmaps, its true also.