Multiple Monitors Increase Productivity

eggoeater writes "An systematic study conducted by NEC-Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies and the University of Utah has concluded that the use of multiple monitors in the workplace increases productivity. The study is discussed on Tom's Hardware, EE Times, and there's a detailed press release on NEC-Mitsubishi. For those of us who use multi-monitors, this is not shocking. But maybe now that it's official, IT managers will view it as a good investment and not just for gamers."

Re:Any excuse is a good excuse....

Yeah, until some PHB decides that, if 2 monitors = productivity gain, 4 monitors = 2x productivity gain, and I wind up with more monitors than I can attend to. Like the famous Western Electric study where they kept tinkering with the lights until they discovered that the productivity gain came from workers feeling more appreciated because somebody was always coming 'round to adjust the lights, and was not correlated to the experimental parameter at all.

That said, I'm not surprised at this result. One monitor simply can't have eight or ten pages usefully viewable at the same time, which is the way I work when I'm deep in the coding and a major reason that I still prefer paper documents for serious creative work. I've often said that what I need is not an ugrade from 17" to 19" and 1024x768 to 1280x1024, but one to 4'x3' at 10240x7680. (Or VR goggles and gloves that can simulate a wall-sized display and the keyboard to drive it.... :-)

Re:Any excuse is a good excuse....

Yeah, until some PHB decides that, if 2 monitors = productivity gain, 4 monitors = 2x productivity gain,

well, you're actually pretty close. not four monitors though, but four vitual desktops.

where i work there are coders with dual monitors and there is me with one monitor and (as the only linux user in the company) 4 desktops. while they maximize all their windows and spend time poking around the taskbar and moving things from monitor to monitor, i race around virtual monitors with the alt-Fx keys.

i have a very simple layout for the four desktops:

code i am working on

remote sessions

email and second remote session if needed

browser if you build for the web, the write/test cycle is as fast as alt-f4 ctrl-r. focus is transfered automaically when you switch desktiops so there's not fritzin' about with the mouse!

less monitors (to a minimum of one, obviously), more virtual desktops.

Gamers?

I don;t know any gamers that use multiple monitors other than those who play flight Sims.

And as far as having multiple monitors at work, it rocks. Find a cheapo 15" CRT or something and you'll be amazed at how restricted you feel if you go back to one monitor.

Re:what's the use?

I've never "gotten" dual head. I guess two 17" monitors running at 1400x1050 are somewhat cheaper than a 21" monitor running at 2048x1536, and they both display about the same # of pixels, but doesn't the seam running down the middle of the dual-head setup really suck?

You think about it the wrong way. Don't think in terms of "cheaper", think in terms of "on the screen but not in my way". (I'll write the rest of this from a Windows point of view, but all the ideas apply equally well to X)

Consider what you normally use a computer for at work... Perhaps you code, or use Word/Excel, or whatever. But most likely you have some primary app open most of the time, to which you want to give as much screen real-estate as possible.

But, having other programs open at the same time, such as Winamp, task manager, a graphing calculator, perhaps a small notepad window for jotting things down - All of those you would normally need to switch back and forth with your primary screen-sucking app. Personally, I usually have some development environment filling my primary screen, and find it very annoying to keep finding my calculator, plug in some numbers, switch back, repeat 200 times a day.

Well, a second monitor makes all of that a non issue. I have my 21" primary monitor taken up with the dev tools, and the 15" secondary keeps what I mentioned (Winamp, taskman, graphcalc, notepad, and usually one or two other random programs) instantly accessible, without having to minimize anything or go searching on the taskbar.

So try thinking of dual monitors in terms of dual-but-separate desktops, rather than a single large desktop (where yes, the line down the middle would drive most people nuts).


I'd like to see this study conducted with a constant amount of $ invested in either a 2-head or 1-head rig, and see which comes out on top. I'm betting on 1-head.

Given a choice between a 19" and a 15", or a single 21", I'd gladly take the former over the latter, hands down.

Additionally, consider the cost from another angle - Most people working with a computer 8 hours a day will have at least a 19" monitor, frequently even a panel rather than a CRT, often connected to a high-end video card. You can easily blow a grand just on getting a decent primary display for a workstation-class machine (and far more for a high-end graphics oriented system - The CAD guys at my last employer had systems where the display hardware alone cost over ten grand).

So, if for another $100, a tenth the price of the primary display, you can boost productivity by a significant margin, would you skimp on such a small amount?

Re:what's the use?

How is this faster than using alt-tab to bring windows to top?

Because you don't have to press alt-tab? They already have a visible spot on the desktop.

Additionally, if you need to do a series of calculations, it takes a LOT less effort to just run through it all without even changing focus from the calculator, than to go through "get a number from app 1, alt-tab, enter in calc, alt-tab, get another number, alt-tab, enter in calc, alt-tab, get another number...".

And that only deals with interactive tasks such as a calulator. How about something passive but informative, like the task manager (or top, in the *nix world), where you need it visible to make use of it? I can't even count how many times I've avoided a crash because I noticed the CPU use suddenly spike as some app began behaving poorly. If I didn't have that window always visible, I'd never see the usage spike until the machine started to crawl, by which time the opportunity to kill the offending process may have passed (Windows Media Player does that on occasion, just brings the machine to a crawl and leaves no choice but to reboot - But if you catch it within about five seconds, the machine hasn't totally stopped responding and you can kill it).

I don't claim you can't do things almost as well with a single monitor. But once you've used a dual, you'll never go back.

What about multiple desktops?

I use 64 in my KDE. So I'm _really_ productive.
Although I sometimes lose applications for days on end.

Duh

My father has two DVSam 17" LCDs connected to a Matrox Millennium G450. He absolutely loves this setup because it makes it much easier to work on larger tasks like copying files using Explorer or viewing multiple Web pages or viewing a Web page while typing an e-mail.
I wish I could have a dual-monitor setup.

Another study

Another study shows even greater productivity if you use NEC-Mitsubishi monitors with ATI Technologies video cards and the user has one or more University of Utah degrees.

What about widescreens...?

It's a shame that the study didn't include replacing a standard 4x3 aspect-ratio display with a wide-screen display. In my personal experience, I've found that the extra width is what really helps -- not so much the ability to have two desktops visible at once. Two 17" displays are better than one 17" display, but one 24" widescreen display is even better still. (no break in the middle, consistent color correction across the entire width, great for wide photo-editing, long code that wraps, and of course, ultra-long syslogs)

Of course, two standard displays are far more economical than one widescreen display... :(

Though the results of the study are undoubtedly true, I find it amusing that this study is put on by a display company, graphics company, and a university that most likely got freebies or kickbacks.

News at 7: "Dell Computer, Intel, and UCLA have found that multiple processors can increase productivity."

Re:What about widescreens...?

The only problem with this is that you then have to precisely [sic?] resize the windows so that stuff is aligned well, whereas on a dual monitor setup, if you had an IDE open in one window and some documentation open in another, they can both just be maximised at the click of a button into their fullest sizes on their respective monitors.

For the same effect on one large monitor you'd have to resize one window to half the screen by using the resize zones on the edges of the window, then resize another to the other half of the screen, it would take longer and thus negate some of the benefit you were trying to get in the first place.

Re:What about widescreens...?

... I've found that the extra width is what really helps -- not so much the ability to have two desktops visible at once.

I disagree strongly. Though I agree that width (and the ablility to have either long lines or multiple side-by-side terms) is of major benifit, I've found the ability to independently switch two monitors through multiple workspaces to be a much bigger win.

Re:What about widescreens...?

Two 17" displays are better than one 17" display, but one 24" widescreen display is even better still.

I disagree. I use 2 17" monitors at work, and I would vastly prefer this to a single, wide monitor. The reason is simple. Sure, if I had one, 24" wide monitor, I could fit quite a bit of stuff on the screen (almost as much as my pair of 17's). However, I'd have to manually manipulate the window sizes in order to make the most of that space.

With 2 monitors, each monitor is its own desktop. If I have an app on one screen and I maximize it, it instantly and automatically fills that entire, single monitor, leaving the other monitor untouched. I can then do the same thing to another app in the other window with another app, and with two easy clicks, I now have both my apps each making maximum use of my viewing space, without having to carefully drag window borders around manually.

This may sound like a small thing, but the few seconds you waste clicking on window borders and resizing quickly becomes an irritating and unnecessary annoyance.

But the tasks I found benefitted most from dual monitors was when I was learning something new. I could open up the API/User Guide/Tutorial/Examples in one window, while having another entire 17" monitor available to actually run the app I was learning, and follow through the tutorial without having to constantly switch virtual desktops, minimize/maximize, or ALT-TAB around.

I can't imagine going back to a single monitor, regardless of its size.

dear slashdot....

it was my birthday recently - obviously you posted this story in order to convince my boss that buying me that extra flat-screen LCD is a cost-effective decision. happy birthday to me and thanks very much :).

(please don't mod this up, don't want the boss to see it :) )

I'd have to agree

I'm typing this up right now on a multi-monitor setup. I can honestly say it is one of the best ways to organize your windows and screens. I don't nearly alt-tab as much as I used to with one monitor. It's just so handy to be able to glance with your eyes and read some documentation while your code is on the other monitor, or look at a header file while you code the cpp....you get the idea :)

A single monitor?

[...] has concluded that the use of multiple monitors in the workplace increases productivity.

Yeah, I hate it when all developers have to share a single monitor. Sucks.

Re:A single monitor?

That's one aspect of Extreme Programming I never liked. Though the Really Extreme Programming (XXXProgramming) where one developer sits on another developer's lap does show some promise...

This just in...

NEC funded study shows that multiple monitors are good for you.

MS funded study shows that Linux is bad for you.

Phillip Morris funded study shows that smoking is good for you.

I think I'm beginning to see a pattern...

Separation of tasks

Just like a Dual Processor machine--but rather than assigning a thread to a CPU, you're associating a thought process with a visual/spatial location.

I replaced my dual monitor setup with an 20 inch Apple Cinema Display when I got my new G5...but I am finding myself missing the twin screens, even despite the size and aspect ratio of the gorgeous new screen...may have to find a way to get another Cinema...and a bigger desk!

Interesting

Personally, though it sounds odd, I had an easier time convincing my company to give every member of my team a second computer, rather than a second monitor.

So we each now have our Windows boxes for running Outlook and doing tests with IE and such, and our Linux boxes for actually doing the coding. Since the app is in Java (some server, some client), it doesn't matter much which machine it runs on. I can say that our productivity has definitely gone up quite a bit since we've gone to this setup.

mmmm, EMF

An double extra dose of healing CRT radiation!

(Guess we should ask for the LCDs...)

Use Samsung dual 19"s

I've had dual 19" Samsung LCDs since the start of the this year. And have to agree it very nice to be able to code on one display, and have our debug/output on another.

As for gaming, X (nVidia actually) has some issues. I've found that most games don't know what to do with the dual displays (UT2003/Savage/FrozenBubble/etc) and usually just display 'centered' between the two displays. This is VERY annoying and I can't play with a seam (even if it's < 1") where most of the action is supposed to take place. Three monitors would be better since you wouldn't have a seam in the center of your POV.

My fix for this is a shell script that just turns off one display and I restart X to play my game. nVidia should really have a configuration for OpenGL games on dual head so I can "lie" to the games that I only want one display used and what display to draw on.

As for my final gripe, with nVidia drivers, you cannot seem to set which output you want for what display. I've got a GeForce4 Ti4200 with DVI/SVGA outputs. The DVI is **FAR** better quality then the SVGA so I want it to the left (read left-to-right ya know) and my SVGA to the right. However when I do this, the drivers number the displays 1,0 instead of what I'd like 0,1. So I'm left using SVGA/DVI to get 0,1.

Just my $0.00002

Well, duh.

Sorry, but I was using dual monitor Macs back in 1994-6 for Director projects, and having the stage on one screen and the score and cast on the other was the only way to go. Everytime I had to go troubleshoot a project on a PC with one dinky 14" monitor, it was painful as all hell. Macs have had this support since 1987 with the Mac II.

Damn Straight...

I've had two 21" monitors for my system at work, and it's made me much more productive. One of the main benefits is that I can debug rendering code much easier because I don't have to switch back and forth between the editor and the application (triggering extra repaints that screw up the codepath I'm trying to debug).

Also, it lets me put my editor (JBuilder, in most cases) on one monitor, and have a UML diagram, a specification, or a bug report, etc...on the other. And considering I was able to add the extra monitor for 300, it's totally worth it.

Neck strain?

For those of you with multiple monitors, how do you set them up? One straight ahead and the 2nd at a 45 deg angle? Or both to the left and right at 20 deg or so?

My question relates to neck strain: while I would like to try two monitors, I am concerned that the constant looking to the left or right for the second monitor (or both in the low-angle setup) would increase strain on the neck muscles and/or neck and shoulder joints.

sPh

Re:Neck strain?

It's not an issue for me. I find I just do an occasional eye flicker to the secondary monitor and work mostly on the primary monitor.

I use two identical 17" Sony E200 monitors at 1280x1024, side by side with about a 10 degree angle between them. Left is Mail, Mozilla, iTunes, and Dock. Right is Menubar, Terminal, and iChat and any other apps. I spend almost all my time looking at Right, with an occasional glance at Mail on Left. Left is AGP Radeon, Right is PCI Radeon.

A few ideas that helped me:

• Use identical monitors
  Any difference between the two (size, resolution, color) is grating
• Speed up your mouse settings (MouseZoom prefpanel on Mac)
  Moving horizontally across 2560 pixels takes times
• Choose one to be your primary and do all focused work there
• Put low-attention apps (mail, browser) on the other
• Choose a dark colored desktop unless you want a tan
• Sit back in your chair when reading mail and surfing Lean in when coding
• Turn off animated GIFs!!!!!! Otherwise the corner-of-the-eye flicker will kill concentration

A few problems (likely all Mac specific):

• VNC server can only see Right (the primary monitor)
• Booting with one monitor off may forget window placement
• Windows are only allowed to be as wide as the width of one monitor.
  Grr.

I use two...

I use two monitors, and I agree, it's a big help, but I find that a larger monitor helps more. I have two 17"s at work, save resolution and everything, but the 3" beige division between desktops isn't always easy to forget about. I have a 19" at home, and it's much better for coding, since the screen holds more text (duh), but all of the toolbars, nav frames, etc take up precious space, and splitting that up between two monitors throws off the eye. I'm planning on a 21" monitor soon, I assume that'll be a big improvement as well.

Also, for those of you who have your monitor refresh rate set at 40 hz or something, change it-- if you stare about 6" above the top of your monitor and look for the monitor in your peripheral vision, you can see the refreshing, it's weird-- that throws me off.

Also, big comfy chairs and a raise tend to raise my productivity too ;)

Productivity

The first I used a dual monitor setup was over 12 years ago in an Autocad 9 workstation while doing a co-op project. I had grown used to the limitations of having crappy graphics and terrible mice, so I (and most of my classmates) got used to type in coordinates into the command line for ACAD and never had to worry about forgetting to turn on grid snaps, etc. Well, we went to this pharmaceutical and they had a sweet CAD rig, and it had TWO nice monitors instead of a crappy one.

What did I get out of it? A nasty neck headache. The monitors were setup with all graphics in one, and text commands on the second. Terrible neck strain because of the monitor placement.

Next multi monitor setup was working at an Army satellite network ops center, the telemetry workstation had 5 monitors but the placement was more ergonomic so it was much easier to handle than if all the info was crammed into one huge screen. That pretty much worked.

At my previous job (dot bomb) as we started shutting down branch offices we got an influx of extra equipment and eventually most of the people that had desktops were assigned a second monitor. In almost every case the second monitor translated into increased productivity. These people were doing things like building flash animations, editing videos or doing web programming, so they appreciated the increased screen space. Even our instructional designers were doing great because they could have more documents opened side-by-side.

Of course, it is awesome to have a second monitor if you are a gamer, but for most of us that work with a gazillion windows opened at the same time, having dual monitors (or for the lucky bastards, a huge widescreen monitor like the Apple studio series) is a godsend.

It's about real estate

I tell ya. The one thing I hate about Windows vs. UNIX-type systems is Window's bad use of screen real estate when compared to X displays running on Linux, Solaris, etc.

For example, with the same 19" monitor in my house, I can have so many more windows open and viewable with Linux than with Windows. Also, Windows in 1280x1024 resolution or higher gets unreadable whereas I don't tend to have that problem with Linux for some reason.

So I'm not so sure about needing >=2 monitors, but perhaps to enhance the GUI readability of various OS's at higher resolutions.

I find it works really well.

Working for a .com that "re-orginased" it's staff several times, we had a room full of unused monitors. Most of the team now use two monitors. It really helps with apps like Visual Studio.
I tried four monitors once, this was great, the only drawback was I kept loosing the mouse pointer.

Screen space == short-term memory

Of course developers are more productive with more screen space. If I can have more windows open at once without overlapping them, I'll spend less time raising/lowering/rearranging them, with less disruption to my thought processes while I'm coding/testing/debugging. More information in front of me with less effort to get it keeps me in flow, which is where I want to be.

I used to have a 17" Apple monitor that I ran at 1600x1200 for development, solely to keep as much text as possible in my field of vision while working. My favorite monitor of all time was a Sun 20" monochrome 100 DPI screen - ran at something like 2000x1500.

Screen space is an extension of my short-term memory - it lets me deal with more complex things with less effort.

Hey, this is cheaper than headcount!

It's the perfect solution; since an extra monitor makes you 18% more efficient, 5 of them must make you almost 100% more efficient.

So, instead of hiring 100 employees, I'll just hire one, and get him 495 extra monitors!

Monitor SIZE is important too

I can generally tell code that is written using small monitors because it tends to be "local". There is not much awareness of existing functions in the same file or in related files.

I have two monitors on my desk (both larger than the laptops preferred by many these days) hooked up to a OSX box. Editing on one with BBEdit, Terminal shell open for the target machine on the other, translucent windows so I can find stuff that is buried. It may seem silly, but I honestly feel that these little details translate into better designs and code.

It' just bandwidth

Of course it raises productivity, it raises the most important bandwidth limitation in the whole system: the one between the user & the machine.

Hands using the keyboard & mouse going one way, and eyes watching the monitor going the other way, is a pretty limited interface. (Yeah, I know there are speakers and printers and such, but most of the information channel is keyboard, mouse, monitor.) Not a lot has happened on the keyboard/mouse end to raise input bandwidth since around 1984, but the output bandwith had grown a lot, from hopeless 10" VGA monitors (or TV's) to having things like 2 21" 1600 x 1200 monitors.

Higher monitor resolution (that's total resolution, not just screen density) makes a huge difference in how fast and how well you can obtain and comprehend information from your machine.

The GUI helps with this too- GUI's are just compression algorithms to compress information in order to pump it through the narrow bandwidth of the screen-eye-brain pipeline. It uses more machine resources in order to present things in a manner that lets your brain recognize things faster, because brains are better built for dealing with graphics than text in many ways.

More monitor space also increaeses input by compressing it (or eliminating useless steps)- if you can see more windows at once, you spend less time using your narrow input pipeline to rearrange things, and more time inputing directly where you want.

See Edward Tufte [edwardtufte.com], who is always upset about people tossing out bandwidth in stupid interface design. Notably, he bashes web browsers, which usually use screen space up on
1- the OS's menu bar & other widgets
2- the web browser's menu bar, toolbar, link bar, & other widgets
3- the sites' title bar, ad banner, navigation bar, sidebar, etc.

This often leaves a couple of square inches of screen space to cram in the information on the site you're actually trying to get too, mostly wasting huge portions of your bandwidth, especially on lower resolution monitors, because all the other widgets stay the same size, and it's the content space that shrinks down to the size of a pea.

I use three

A good resource for multiple monitors is here [realtimesoft.com].

I use 3 monitors at home Left is API, Centre is IDE, Right is Application (plus Trillian, WinAmp etc). One you've gone double, you never want to go back :-)

On windows 98 & XP it's dead easy. Shove in an old PCI card and away you go. I've never got it working properly with Linux.

T