I am doing a little research on productivity for one of our projects and I thought I’d ask you for a little help.
It’s really a question for those of you who use double (or more) screen setup at work. Do you find that you are more productive with two screens? Could you give some examples of how you use your two screens setup? Also, if you could let me know how your productivity was affected when you got the 2nd screen.
I know how it affected me but I don’t want to base this project on my own experiences. So any help would be greatly appreciated.
You can either leave your answers in comments or email me directly.
Many thanks for your help.
I use to have 2 screens when working in a company and I did find an improvement. I would have my main screen display what I was currently working on and all the supporting applications on the second screen. That way I didn’t have to be minimizing shuffling through the different applications + email, it was much more organized that way.
I use at least 2 screens all the time (I got a little 7inch USB screen for my laptoping) and I find that the biggest gain is the separation that it forces you to implement; I used to go for big screens and use a variety of widgets to rearrange windows into halfs or quarters (similar to the Snap feature in Windows 7), but it ended up as a complete mess.
With two screens there is a certain amount of discipline required in how you lay out your work; I generally have mine arranged in a “Inputs”, and “Outputs” layout, so I’ll have ebooks, web pages, reading material, google reader, twitter, etc all on one screen, and dreamweaver, console windows, onenote, proposals etc to be written on another.
Works great! Highly recommended!
I’m a graphic web designer, I use three screens: one CTR 1024×768, one flat 16:9 1680 and one flat 14:3 1280×1024.
These screens are useful to test website and graphic in different colors and formats.
I love using multiple screens, it improves my time for every job: I put palettes in a screen and use one to work and in the third I open another application, so I can do two tasks at a time.
I have multiple screens at home too, but only two.. because it’s so handy, easy and convenient that I became “addicted”.
I used to use two screens but I actually found the second one to be too distracting. Most people claim that they have work stuff on it, I found that I would keep all the distracting apps opened there (skype, twitter etc.).
Since I went back to single screen my productivity increased tremendously.