Bigger Monitor == More Productive
The bigger your monitors, the more productive and higher quality work will be produced by those performing complex tasks on computers. This applies to people like software developers. There is, of course, a point of diminishing returns. For those leaders thinking about what should be offered as standard equipment, here is my year 2021 suggestion based on my research-informed opinion:
Offer a 27-inch monitor to your staff as your baseline with a free option to super-size that to a 32-inch monitor for those who self-select to wanting one. Allow configurations of multiples of these upon approved request. Offer monitor arms to arrange the monitors ergonomically at a comfortable viewing height such the user's gaze lands near the upper middle third of the display. Only require that sensible rationale has been applied to the approval process for a dual monitor display. Why? Because the productivity increases afforded by these larger displays far exceed the cost of the equipment.
References:
- Saleem and Weiler (2018). Performance, workload, and usability in a multiscreen, multi-device, information rich environment. PeerJ Comput. Sci. 4:e162; DOI 10.7717/peerj-cs.162.
- Anderson, J.A. (2007). Productivity, Screens, and Aspect Ratios. CIC Report 200719, 1-63.
- Anderson, J. A. (2003). Productivity and multi-screen displays. CIC Report No. 200351, 1-113.
- Colvin, J., Tobler, N., & Anderson, J. A. (2004). Productivity and multi-screen displays. Rocky Mountain Communication Review, 2, 19-30.
- Czerwinski, M., Smith, G., Regan, T., Meyers, B., Robertson, G., & Starkweather, G. (2003). Toward characterizing the productivity benefits of very large displays. Proc. INTERACT, 9-16.
- Hutchins, R. R., Smith, G., Meyers, B., Czerwinski, M., & Robertson, G. (2004). Display space usage and window management operation: Comparisons between single monitor and multiple monitor users. Proc. Advanced Visual Interfaces, 32 - 39.
- Simmons, T. and Manahan, M. (1999). The effects of monitor size on user performance and preference, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, 1593-1597.
Project Manager at SHAPE
2 年Bigger monitors don't = more productive work (within reason). You can have a 24inch monitor and a 32inch monitor and you will not gain any more productivity if they're both 1920*1080 or 1920*1200. They will both display the same amount of information - that information will just be larger on a 32inch monitor, but it will also be far less sharp. The most overlooked spec for productivity is resolution, and it's the driving factor behind how much can be displayed on a single screen. a 1440p monitor will allow you to have ~80% more information on the screen than a 1080p monitor. a 4K monitor will allow you to have 300% more information on the screen.. Obviously, a higher resolution means the elements that are being displayed become smaller, but often at 1080p, the elements are too large anyway. a 28inch 4K monitor scaled to 125% is the sweet spot for me. It allows 220% more information to be displayed, while maintaining reasonable sizing of on screen elements. Some people will say that you can just zoom out on things like spreadsheets to see more, but fonts can't drop below 1 pixel wide (in terms of stroke width), so you'll just end up with "####" hashes being displayed in cells, instead of the actually data.
Principal Engineer and Technical Director Distributed Inferencing (vllmd)
4 年Well, you know me, Adrian. Go big or GTFO. As such, in 2019 I bought a 6k resolution Mac Display and a big hunk of aluminum stand. The display is enormous and beautiful. I was speaking with my wife about it - had we predicted 2020, we would have pushed the purchase off. Still, zero buyer remorse, although very few firms would pay for such a display for their employees. Cheers, -steve
Go-To-Market | Digital Transformation | Strategy | Management Consulting | Program Management | Business Process
4 年You have touched a very important point! With increasing work from home situation, consumers want to be able to connect their Google TV to the monitor. Play Google Stadia games. I use both and it really drives my productivity when I take breaks. Bigger monitors are great for me to open my CAD drawings and zoom in to the desired levels. Therefore, it serves as multi-purpose set up to boost productivity. Moving to a 32" monitor could be important for professional editing, creating dashboards, and UI/UX work. Adrian Otto #productivity Do not forget the low blue light filters!
Technology Product Executive | Cloud & AI-Driven Growth | Scaling Product-Led Businesses | Ex-Microsoft, VMware
4 年Totally agree! I also like wide screen monitors that can double down as a dual screen monitor via the windows snap feature.
Hands-on Architect | Reverse-Engineer at allO
4 年I can remember black/green monochrome screen with ascii art graphics as well as 24 function keys on the keyboard, magnetic tapes and 7'' discs (no not the 5 1/4 and not 3.5 ones) ... ergonomics and screen use changed massive. But nowadays its 'retro'-cool to have the most noisy keyboard combined with multiple 4k screens :) - maybe i am just getting old...