Larger Monitors = Higher Productivity Anyone Got Proof?

[alwaysON]

Anyone happens to know of a published article or paper showing measurable productivity increase with larger monitor sizes.

 

[GrumpyMan]

Google is your friend.

 

[alwaysON]

thank you for the post, I was hoping to get more quantitative data. most of the links were advertiser claims.

 

[RSMemphis]

Well, I am not sure if you can find an objective study...

This one seems almost reasonable: White paper study (by a monitor company)
at least it lists some examples.

Honestly, I am not sure if a sure-fire study exists - it just happens to depend too much on the employee and how well they are adapting to a new situation. And how much they can increase their productivity by multitasking.
I honestly don't know a lot of people who can use 1280x1024 resolution well, or even know how much they could profit from pivot applications.
Ever since I bought an LCD, I program in portrait, not landscape mode, and I love it.
But the productivity increase would be hard to measure... Maybe I just liked it better, and was less tired when done, but nothing a company can profit on. Or maybe I was 5% fast in writing lines and finding bugs.
I am not sure that if there were a study, I would believe it.

 

[Ben50]

Even if you do find a study that finds a measurable productivity increase, I wouldn't put much stock in it unless they are testing the exact same applications that you use. The main productivity gains from a larger monitor come from less scrolling and less eye strain. It all depends on which applications you use frequently and what you do with them.

 

[alwaysON]

Thanks to everyone for there insight. The situation I'm faced with is this:

My IS department, responsible for much of our tech publications and electronic catalog is proposing an upgrade from the current 17" monitors to larger 19", perhaps even 21".

From what I've been able to gather, the increase in productivity rise exponentially with the increase in number of applications. Well, currently, my group runs at least 5 apps to perform our daily tasks. Not to mention this includes the viewing of computer and hand generated engineering drawings.

In my opinion, larger monitors would greatly help our productivity because we'll have enough space to run split screens. I just need something measurable to prove this...

 

[Gosharkss]

I have a study that is just what you are looking for. It was done by Center for HCI design, Shool of Informatics, City University, London. I do not have soft copy, if you send me an e-mail at jim@monitorsdirect.com, with your fax # I would be happy to fax it to you.

 

[alwaysON]

Email sent, many thanks...

 

[VBboy]

It is becoming published as I click the "Reply to Thread" button here.

On a 15", you need to do X amount of scrolling. On a 19", you need to do X/k amount of scrolling, where k is a positive number representing the scrolling-decrease coefficient. We need to perform data smoothing by taking the Fourier transform of the 15" matrix, pointwise multiplying it with a Gaussian in the frequency domain, and then taking the inverse Fourier transform to return to the spacial domain of a 19". The results speak for themselves!



I'm on crack, and loving' it!

 

[alwaysON]

I was thinking more in the lines of usability studies...

 

[Woodchuck2000]

The problem is that it's very subjective. I'm running two monitors side-by-side in 1024x768 and for many applications it speeds things up enormously. That said, for many users it would probably make little difference. The desktop area available will only really be a limiting factor to those people who are quite proficient with computers and use the space efficiently.

It's like asking for proof that a better racquet in tennis makes people play better. For the majority of the population it wouldn't make a difference so it's very hard to prove in objective terms.

 

[alwaysON]

Woodchuck, you're right... much of the information is very subjective. However, there are a few things that people do benefit from.

For example, larger monitors results in larger font sizes. This speeds up the ability to search for the purpose of locating information of identifying error. This can be supported by many psychological studies in the areas of human cognition and human factors.

So yes, a part of increased productivity does involve additional training and the user actually complying to possible changes. But there are some added benefits simply because the way humans work.

Please feel free to contribute your thoughts and ideas. I would love to hear them...

 

[bcterps]

I would think that dual monitors would impact productivity more than going from 17" to 19-21". I'd love to have dual 17" monitors at my office, since I do an large amount of Excel work and having different spreadsheets on different monitors would make a world of difference. I guess it's the type of applications that you work with as well.

--Ben

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

It's not really so much what programs as how many. We monitor and access roughly 10 different systems simultaneously where I work. That requires two monitors as a minimum. I find myself wanting three just to keep the DMS500 telnet apps separate from our customer database, Cornerstone access, and MVP clients. When you have 6+ telnet sessions open plus various other intranet websites, email, Excel, Word, etc you quickly see the need for two monitors...

 

[Sunner]

Im using 19" monitors at work, and it's definately a big upgrade from the time when I was sitting by a 17".

But then, my job includes alot of logreading, checking through configuration files, not to mention looking through scripts and such.
And on a bigger monitor, I can use higher resolutions, which means I can see more of the log/config file/script/whatever at once, which is good cause that's faster than having to scroll all the time.

But in the end, it depends on the application.