Unlike monitor makers with their multidisplay studies, I have no research proving you’ll find as much benefit from a single monitor as I did. Was my experience with a single screen simply a function of personal preference, or was it a demonstration of the fundamental problem of working on two or more displays? With a single screen that couldn’t accommodate too many simultaneous stimuli, a screen just large enough for a single word processor or browser window, I found something increasingly elusive in our multiscreen world: focus. But after a few days of adjusting to the new setup, an unusual serenity invaded my normally harried workday. At first, the smaller workspace felt punishingly cramped. Two months ago, about five years after becoming an ardent proselytizer for the Church of the Second Display, I turned off the extra screen on my desktop computer. In a switch that amounts to heresy among some techies, I’ve become a two-screen skeptic. Now two-monitor setups, once the rarefied domain of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, have become de rigueur in office parks across America.īut what if we’ve all been duped? What if more monitors and bigger monitors actually detract from, rather than improve, how you work? What if, rather than more space to get stuff done, what you get from a larger display or two displays is more freedom from work - more room for Twitter, email, chatting and all the other digitized diversions that conspire to get you fired? It didn’t seem to matter that the research was sponsored by Dell and NEC, among other monitor manufacturers. As the price of computer monitors plummeted over the last decade, studies showed that increasing display size increased people’s productivity. And more room to work would seem to mean faster work.Įven science seemed to agree. The logic seemed airtight: Two (or more) computer monitors means more room on your virtual desktop, which means more room to do your work.
For years, techies have argued that getting an extra monitor or two for your desktop computer is an especially effective way to increase personal productivity.
0 kommentar(er)
