More screen is better for productivity, studies show | Hacker News Reader

More screen is better for productivity, studies show

skeptics.stackexchange.com

116 pointssklivvz197155 comments

Just to throw a wrench into this:

It has been shown that changing environments improves performance and memory. So moving around the house, or going to different locations, can improve productivity as well.

Using a ton of big monitors keeps you chained to your desk and a desk chair.

I use a 13" laptop but I use 9 OSX Spaces and constantly switch between them. I do think that it's nicer to have more screen real estate, but it's a tradeoff between that and mobility.

As it is now I move constantly throughout the day. I will do some work at Starbucks then take a break by walking a few blocks to another coffee shop. This provides a lot of outdoors time and lots of different environments. There is a lifestyle benefit here for me too.

Even if I just stayed in my home or office, I would not enjoy being chained to my desk. When I work at home I rotate between the bed, the desk, the bar/barstool, the recliner, the couch, outside on the balcony, and even standing up sometimes.

I believe this boosts my productivity and keeps me refreshed. Anyway I'd love to see some studies done not just on screen space but on the benefits of highly mobile working.

My strategy is similar:

For code-related tasks, I prefer the portability of my 13" laptop with multiple virtual desktops. When I find myself in a rut, I'll get up and relocate and regain productivity immediately.

I'll usually start my day at home in the office area, then move to a coffeeshop for the afternoon, then relocate to another later, then home again possibly in the living room or dining room. Sometimes I'll meet up with friends and co-work; just knowing that people around me are being productive helps me be productive too.

For things like consuming content, research, and making art/graphics, and relaxation, I prefer my 24" desktop at home.

Another interesting point is I feel like I have an association between the device and the types of activities I perform on them, to the point that I find it hard to write code on my desktop these days.

> Another interesting point is I feel like I have an association between the device and the types of activities I perform on them, to the point that I find it hard to write code on my desktop these days.

Do you have a similar association that you can only write code when you are on your 13"?

If you do, it sounds like you have trained yourself nicely to be productive.

It's hard to tell since I don't have an equivalent control device, but I believe I do. It feels like with the limited screen real-estate, where my code takes up about 60% of the screen and a terminal for the rest, I can focus a lot better when I do.

Every so often I'll still get distracted and start browsing HN, but that usually means I need to relocate or take a break from the computer.

Also see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1917725.

I've also found (what I'm sure everyone knows and is thinking about but don't seem to mention in this thread) that the optimal number of monitors or screen resolution also depends on what tasks is being worked on as well as which tools are used.

Compare: Tools like Squeak/Pharo Smalltalk requires a fairly large screen space for a single window since all the "windows" open within the native window and it's harder to work with overlapping windows within that space.

vs.

Dolphin Smalltalk which supports multiple native windows, where you can do alt-tab fairly quickly and with a culture of writing shorter methods, a smaller screen is viable.

when I am running vim+vimclojure, I use a wide vim window so i can run tabbed buffers on the left and the output on the right.

Related to productivity: I've tried experimenting with various approaches, including having online/offline time. Where I break up (primarily development related) tasks into online-information-doc-gathering and offline-coding tasks. Seems to work for efficiency, but I can't stick to it.

So, ideally, an office in a motorhome!

I absolutely agree, but with one exception. When I am learning something (currently: Django 1.3) I really need the extra screen space to peruse the docs, the IDE, the browser, and mauybe an IM or IRC window.

But, when I know the API (like say, CakePHP), I much prefer to grab the laptop, find a quiet corner somewhere, and go to town.

Tomorrow is a laptop day at Cielito Lindo. Iced tea, chips and salsa, and coding. Tomorrow will be a good day.

Great point.

It took me some time to learn multiple desktop spaces in Ubuntu, but now it comes naturally to me.

  Desktop 1: Browser
  Desktop 2: Source code
  Desktop 3: Terminal for SSH

Great points. I work 95% out of a home office and while I have a large display in my home office I probably use it less than 1/3 of the time. One issue is health related: I have written about this before, but I'll mention it again: it can be very unhealthy to sit in a chair for long periods of time. In my case, I developed blod clots and almost died from two pulmonary embolisms 4.5 years ago. I tell anyone who will take my advice to set a timer to remind them to stand up every 20 or 30 minutes or so. I find that switching between sitting at my desk and a few other locations where I can comfortably work with my legs up using a lap-desk helps a lot.

re: issue of productivity: when I use an IDE like IntelliJ or RubyMine, I do like to plug my laptop into a large screen. When using Emacs with Lisp, a small screen is fine. Also, I spend a lot of time in SSH shells, and a small screen is good enough for that.

+1 for your comments, especially about the benefits of working in different environments

Screen distance from the user greatly impacts the usability. I would also add that if you have HN (or Reddit) open on one of those monitors, you probably aren't going to be more productive.

For the benefits of those on HN, here is my answer to the question on Skeptics-StackExchange:

Having championed the purchase of five 30" for the equity research officers at Itaú Securities, I have some anecodotal evidence to share, which pretty much invalidates any study regarding 30" monitors.

Here's the deal:

A 30" monitor is pretty large and its distance from the user GREATLY impacts its usability. For a 30" monitor to be usable it needs to be placed on the desktop at about an armslength to be comfortable and productive. For many desks, this distance is an impossibility, especially corner desks where the monitor is catacornered.

Most people when they use an external screen place it just behind the keyboard. This does not work with a 30" monitor, as it is too close and you end up shifting your head up and down and laterally far too much.

This effect is significant enough to invalidate pretty much any study that doesn't take this into account and control it.

At Itaú Securities all five 30" monitors were first used on corner desks with the monitor catacornered. The major factor which determined if it was useable was each analysts body posture when seating at their desk. Those analysts which sat slouched in their chair and leaning back when they were modifying their financial models in Excel, loved the monitor and said that others would be allowed to use it when you pry it from their cold dead fingers. Those with good posture ended up sitting far too close to the screen and since the monitor was catacornered, they were unable to adjust the distance to be comfortable. None realized that monitor distance were the reason for their discomfort. All that sat with good posture abandoned the 30" monitor and return to their crappy 19" monitors. It was only when one of the monitors was relocated to a non-corner desk and placed at the very back of the desk when we realized the impact of monitor distance and comfort.

Anyways, I've never seen this particular issue with larger monitors discussed anywhere with regards so I figured I'd share it here. I'm sure this issue is equally applicable to multi-monitor setups.

I wish I could go back and add this to my YCombinator app (without it being marked as late) as "something I have discovered" as it's fairly original semi-scientific research and more interesting than the answer I originally put.

I use four screens, 1 30", 1 24", and 2 20", for a total of 9.7 million pixels, with some awesome monitor arms. I wrote all about it at http://littlebitofcode.com/2010/02/07/how-i-learned-to-love-....

I like to think of multiple monitors like a large physical workspace. While you are only working on one thing at a time, you can have reams of supporting information available ready to view without stopping what you are doing, saving yourself a context switch. In a physical workspace, you spread your work out so you can see it all at once, it's not advantageous to pile it all on top of each other and shuffle piles, same with computers.

I added monitors one at a time over a period of about a year. This gave me time to adjust my workflow across each transition, and I had a specific idea of what I would use additional screen space for each time. There are still times when I feel like I could use some additional work area, but they are relatively spread out. If money were no object, I would have 3 30" displays, with 2 24" displays above them. I might replace a 20" display with a 30", but I don't want to use less than 4 monitors, and I probably won't do that any time soon.

I see a lot of talk in the main post about screen size but nothing about what actually matters which is screen resolution. I just picked up a new Vaio Z series with a 13.1 inch screen for when I am on the road. While it only has a 13.1" screen which would seem pitiful at first glance, it is Full HD resolution (1920x1080) and it's quickly becoming one of my favourite machines to develop on. Now I'm not saying anything about optimal screen size because of course everything needs to be comfortable to the viewer's eyesight... but if you're having productivity discussions then total resolution is the bar to measure by. What size and how many screens that is spread across is mostly a matter of personal ergonomic preferences. (though multiple vs. single screens and the ability to truly separate content probably does have some limited impact as well)

There are a lot of people out there, myself included, that don't have great vision, that desperately want bigger pixels, not smaller pixels.

The small pixel people are winning. :(

Trust me, I do understand that well too. My girlfriend has very poor vision, borderline legally blind for driving. When we purchased a notebook for her we went with a 17" screen but also very high resolution. I then used Windows DPI scaling to bring everything up to a size she can read easily but the high native resolution keeps the image nice and sharp. She was very pleased with the results and can use it with ease.

Windows DPI scaling used to not work very well. Maybe it has improved. For example, I remember Windows XP applications with text running off the edges of windows and buttons. Perhaps Windows DPI scaling is a reasonable option now.

Winning? The 17" CRT I had 13 years ago was good at 1280x1024 and could do 1600x1200.

We're so not-winning that everyday resolution has barely changed since then; for a similar price now a careful 24" purchase gets 1900x1200 and a careless one gets 23" 1920x1080.

For comparison, IBM was releasing an 18Gb mid-range notebook hard drive in 1999, now 320/500/640Gb fight out the mid £40 price range.

You're comparing two completely different technologies though, that'd be like me complaining about how we're "so not-winning" with the size and price of SSDs.

Side Note: A 23" monitor purchase is not necessarily a "careless" one, for example the NEC model I use has one of the nicest feature sets for the price (fully adjustable base, IPS panel) but is only available in a 23.1" 1920x1080 version.

I'm not directly comparing two technologies, just comparing the rate of change in them. 1024 to 1080 is an increase of 56 vertical pixels.

That has to be one of the slowest changing metrics in modern computing.

What I meant by careless is that if you shop a typical desktop dcreen by price you will get 1920x1080 at 22/23/24 screens; you can buy 1900x1200 but you need to carefully find one because they are uncommon. Sure you can both 'care' and buy a screen like you have. But you can't not-care and have a chance at ending up with the higher resolution.

And you can get that res. for 24" £130, but a significant jump needs 27" or 30" screens - and 27" start with the same resolution! You need £730 for a 27" with higher resolution and £1200 for a 30". And that 6x multiplier gets you 1.5x more vertical pixels.

(How is that high-res small-pixel people 'winning'?)

I've happily gone from a pair of 19" 4:3 monitors to one 24" 16:9 monitor.

The thing that's made the net loss of screen space feel like a productivity boost is that now I make very heavy use of Spaces (which I absolutely love), whereas before, I found it pretty jarring with the dual screen setup, and rarely used it.

I've also discovered that four spaces arranged horizontally is perfect for me. The weird thing is that Spaces became MORE useful when I disabled the feature that wraps around from the first and last spaces. (It's not a stock tweak - you'll need to download Tinker Tool to access the option). The very slight discipline this imposed helped me develop a really clear idea about which space I was in. I can now "see" them floating on either side of my actual screen.

So now I think that "single" vs. "dual" is overly simplistic. In truth, optimized productivity can also result from the use of virtual screens, without which, a dual arrangement may be more efficient, but with which, the single screen suddenly gets a lot more useful.For the sake of focus, I love knowing where stuff is, and being able to 'push' it out of view until the precise moment I need it. When I do toggle to it, it's one of only one or two things visible. As a result, I always feel like I'm entirely focused on whatever is immediately in front of me. Also, the vague Minority Report sense of big horizontal scrolling never gets old.

Of course, how well this works varies depending on the task. Obviously, different people have very different jobs. Also, how well people can imagine and handle virtual spaces is by no means constant. In any case, if you're generally a fan of dual screens, but are not 100% satisfied, and have a good spatial imagination, try one big screen + Spaces, and see if this combination makes a difference.

So, the person asking the question says there are no independent studies. The only answer cites two studies about XGA displays and one study that claims that "some tasks can be performed faster". The title of the post on hn is: more is better, studies show. With all due respect but this is ridiculous.

Edit: So the question on stackoverflow was asked by you.

They compare screens up to 24 monitors and 42". The studies mentioned are clearly more reputable than the NEC and Apple sponsored ones you find on other sites.

I don't think that a study by a monitor vendor that shows that you need more and larger screens is really valuable.

There was an article about this on Lifehacker written by Clay Johnson; "...there's an optimal number of pixels you need to complete the tasks you need to complete. Worry about that number, not the number of monitors you have. That optimal number, for the vast majority of people is about 2500x1400. In 2003—before widescreen became commonplace—it was the case that 2 17-20"(2560 pixels wide) LCDs was the only affordable way to acquire an optimal number of pixels. Today, you can pick up a 27 inch display with 2560x1440 pixels along with a computer attached to it for under $1500. This number of pixels allows you to accomplish most tasks—whether it's writing code and debugging, writing a blog post and reading primary sources, or editing one spreadsheet with data from another."

Source: http://lifehacker.com/#!5616859/is-the-multiple+monitor-prod...

That was written back in August of last year, so the price of a 27 inch display is even less now...

I used have a 2 monitor setup, until I found myself getting tired of looking left and right to click stuff all the time (monitors where 24" each). I switched to a single 32" and I was honestly able to focus more, in my case more screen is more productive but in a single monitor setup.

This somehow reminds of a productivity study done with factory workers (sorry couldn't find a source of sime kind, so this if from memory). They had to carry out relativly simple manual labor taks, the goal of the study was to analyze if there is a link between productivity and brightness of the workplace. After increasing the brightness in the factory productivtiy was rising. So the brightness was increased again and again to find the optimal lighting. Some day workers were showing up wearing sunglasses. The actual reason why productivity rose wasn't the brightness but the attention those blue collar workers were getting from the scientist carrying out the study.

My guess is that when you are beeing monitored (no pun intended) productivity will always rise. Especially if you get a fancy curved surface display like in the microsoft study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

I've often wondered about this. There are a lot of variables and few folks have done the really heavy lifting of trying to propose an experiment that eliminates as many as possible.

My current setup is two 24" monitors one above the other in 'landscape' mode. It is more productive (for me) than two monitors that are adjacent. For a while at Google I used one monitor in front of me and one to the right in portrait mode. I find reading code in portrait mode helps.

When I'm playing with one of my old VAXes and have a VT420 with its 25 line by 80 column screen it is almost comically painful.

However I'm about to embark on a 'new' thing, which is three monitors, a 30" one in the center and then two 24" monitors in portrait mode on either side. This achieves the curvature which is important (you really do want your monitor surface as perpindicular to your eyes as possible) and avoids the seam in the middle for large surface area things.

I have tried off and on to find someone who either makes, or could make, a SWXGA (stupidly wide XGA) which is 2550 x 600 or maybe 1920 x 480. With a touch screen. In my ideal world this would be at the base of my center monitor, display useful information (think a whole monitor for a system tray / atop / system monitor / notifications) that I could touch (on the info) to bring up an app on the main display to dive deeper into it). I currently have the 10" MiMo monitor [1] with some not so clever yet custom code to interpret screen touches as non-motion mouse clicks (which is to say I try not to reset the mouse co-ordinates to the Mimo monitor but I do want the 'click' event delivered to the window that is open. If you're digging around for a startup plan with a hardware component you are welcome to make me one of these, happy to give a requirements document to anyone who wants one.

As for the mechanism that makes one more productive, its apparently removing the physical action. Specifically if I need to refer to another window/data to continue I don't have to move my mouse and click I can just 'look'. My first use case for e-Readers was keeping PDFs of component data sheets open on my workbench much like one used to have a databook open to the correct page.

[1] http://www.mimomonitors.com/products/imo-monster-touch-10-in...

While I don't doubt that more screen real estate helps most programmers, it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

In the past few years my work environment would change from day to day (different offices and coffee shops) so I didn't have the luxury of lugging around large monitors and instead worked exclusively from my laptop's small display. As a result of this and my dislike for Mac OSX's default window navigation I set up my own hotkeys for switching between my most frequent applications (documented here: http://techiferous.com/2009/12/streamlining-your-workflow-wi... ).

Now when I am presented with an option of hooking up more monitors to my laptop I decline because my inter-app workflow is so streamlined on (and optimized for) my tiny laptop screen.

Jeff himself has had three 19" monitors at home: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/06/multiple-monitors-a... I don't think he disagrees having a similar arrangement is superior over the alternative of a large monitor. It is not a "Joel vs Jeff" thing as it is made out to be, in the question.

Most of our standard apps, standard websites are designed to work at resolutions much smaller than what 30" monitor would display. It makes a lot more sense to have multiple monitors where you don't have to wrestle using Grid software to move things around. - It feels a lot more natural to have browser open in one monitor and the IDE/Text editor in other.

I find the idea of optimizing for only two applications - browser and IDE somewhat limiting.

Right now I have two browser windows open side by side on the same 30" monitor - one with the stackexchange posting, and one with the HN page where I'm replying to you.

Often I'll have more than one XCode window open on the 30" display, but sometimes I need the whole display to have all the panels open and a reasonable view of Interface Builder. At that point, I'll use the 27" display of my iMac to display documentation.

It's also very helpful to be able to have my task list open on the other screen and not have to keep opening and closing it.

Summary: Multiple screens are good because you can use the whole of one of them to focus on something while still having something else available in the periphery. Giant screens are good because you can put more things on them together.

Cost and desk space are real reasons not to have more and larger screens, but I find it hard to understand how less display can possibly be better in absolute terms.

When I'm working on Windows I feel the same way, the way that two monitors lets me easily have two tasks going at once is really nice. When I have better window management facilities available though I find I prefer the flexibility of one big window. This is true even of the default GNOME window manager, Metacity, with its ALT-click behavior - but its even more true when I can install a tiling window manager like Awesome or XMonad.

I prefer as many screens as I can have. I'm currently working with 2*24', in vertical (portrait) orientation. I have a 3rd 17' simply because I don't currently want to spend money on a 3rd or 4th 24'. However I plan to soon.

For me I find a problem much easier to handle if I can spread out all the supporting information - in my case HTML, CSS, JS, PY files + Chrome and documentation. The more screen real-estate I have, the better.

Considering how much my time is worth, even a 1% increase in performance from a new screen makes it a no-brainer over a year. The same is probably true for you the reader.

I don't need studies, I'm totally convinced. I'm also convinced that you need to get used to spreading your work out to get the full benefit.

Reading the post and responses, I noted that screen curvature was important at higher screen sizes.

I use a 27" iMac at home (2560×1440, 109ppi), and find the extra screen real-estate very useful. My only gripe is that a screen this large needs a little curvature on each side, otherwise its left and right sides become slightly less pleasant to work with in comparison to the center.

I'm also someone who needs things on-screen to be physically big. OS X still feels very pixel-optimised as opposed to vector-driven in its UI, so everything shrinks on a higher-PPI display. Linux on the other hand scales itself much better.

Indeed. I wish it were possible to make the fonts OSX uses bigger, especially the menu bar.

Despite this, consumer laptops are now commonly 1366x768 and macbooks are 1280x800.

The recent Air went up to 1440x900, but generally I'm disappointed that the standard resolution in portable screens hasn't improved for years.

Used to be that wuxga, 1920x1200, was readily available on sub-17" laptops but it seems everyone is downgrading to so-called "HD". Seems the focus is on entertainment, not business or productivity.

I have 6 screens hooked up to my main pc at home: http://i.imgur.com/Vt7D9.jpg

6 is a bit overkill (though sometimes handy) but 3 is great. At work I've got 3 hooked up to my laptop, perfect for things like TDD, especially given Visual Studio 2010 allows you to have code windows on different monitors. 1 window for unit test code, 1 window for code under test, 1 window for test runner/results.

It takes too long to move your mouse from one screen to another. Using several screens is overrated. I can agree with UI developers who need to overview big graphics and use two or more screens, but for people writing text or code it is surely distracting to use more than one screen (my own experience).

Perhaps the problem is with the mouse, then, not the screens.

I've had best results with two 22-inch monitors, everything either maximized or divided vertically (two tall windows). Tiling window managers work very well for this, as does Emacs. Switching between the monitors and different workspaces via the keyboard helps tremendously.

I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. I was initially completely satisfied with my 19" single monitor set up (ignorance is bliss). However, when I upgraded to my current dual monitor set up my life was forever changed. I definitely agree with the more real estate more productivity school of thought.

For me a larger monitor out does any other setup. As a dev I have multiple windows open, generally three or more and I have to move back and forth. The less key strokes, mouse movements or head movement to me means less change in context and the more I can stay on my thought processes. The more I stay focused means less time wasted. This is especially true over a longer period of dev time, or especially when you have a learning curve to work through.

I usually get funny looks from the laptop dev's when I argue the point, but I have gotten a few people to try it and most converted. It maybe a creature of habit issue or get into the practice of going through certain motions but I do not think it is subjective for each individual.

So, this seems like a no brainer... how'd this get to the front page? Is there really anyone that would argue that less screen leads to more productivity? Or that virtual desktops are better for productivity than nice large monitors?

Personally I am a fan of two good sized screens (20 inch) vs. one monsterous screen. It lets me split out the work I am doing into logical groups, and overall helps my productivity.

Now, I will say being chained to a desk isn't ideal, and I still like to go to the park with some wifi to get a breather... but ultimately even with the additional comfort of being away from my desk, I am not fooled into thinking that setup is more productive...

Is mobility better better for productivity? Pretty much all hackers I know now work on laptops, sometimes really small ones. Are they throwing their productivity out the window, or are we simply not measuring the right things?

My current setup is 21.5 inch iMac @ 1920x1080 & 22 inches Dell, vertically @ 1050x1680.

I prefer 2 screens instead of 1 big screen. The reason is simple enough: I would like to watch movie and monitoring another stuff at the same time (quick glance for every 3-5 minutes or so). Having 1 screen would force me to either not go fullscreen (quite hard to enjoy the movie) or switch context all the time.

Also multiple screens give you this sense of "border" where you can feel natural to snap them to the edges.

I have a 30' which is digitally split in 4 windows with my 13' MBP on the right below side. This means I get 5 nearly identical 1280x800 screens.

With this big screen I need to have my browser default zoom at 125% (which means 1024 in width which is exactly fine for browsing the web)

I really feel how it's slower to do things with just one window (the MBP one), especially developing.

The 2 separate screens vs one large one has a lot to do with how many window managers, especially on Windows, work. If you have a decent way to divide up a big screen it may be preferable to 2 screens, but if you have apps/ windowing that works better taking up a full screen then 2 screens would be better.

I have dual screen setup: a 24" screen connected to my laptop. But I find I am most productive sitting with my legs stretched out and the laptop on my lap. Anyone else?

There is a lot of talk about spaces. Does anyone else find they find the transition a bit much at times?

Do people have certain configurations that work well for them?

This might just be me, but isn't this result obvious?

Not at all. I agree with Spolsky about needing two monitors for GUI work, but otherwise more screen real estate pretty much equates with shifting your focus between contexts, which in my experience is what kills productivity. Knowing what you are doing is the biggest boost to productivity.

I personally prefer 2 screens, with the ability to separate tasks on different screens... or separate distractions to another screen.

At work I have two monitors plus my laptop's built in display which is smaller and doesn't match the "flow" of the other two. I ended up really liking this because less important things like Pandora, email, etc all live on the laptop monitor and the psychological barrier between that monitor and the other two helps me focus more.

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