Despite the fact that there is little evidence that using multiple monitors will make a programmer substantially more productive, many coders will subjectively claim that they can’t live without a second display. Why do people feel so strongly about the issue? And is it possible that the perception of efficiency is just as important as real efficiency?
The Scientific Angle
A few months ago, I experimented for a while with a dual-monitor setup. My main computer is a 14” Thinkpad, and I connected to either a 24” widescreen LCD (in my lab at U of T) or my 20” widescreen at home. After a while, I found that I wasn’t really seeing the “obvious benefits” that some people rave about.
I had heard about studies that supposedly proved that you can be up to 50% more productive by adding a second display. In my post Multiple-Monitor Productivity: Fact or Fiction? I looked at these studies, and concluded that in some isolated tasks — like cutting and pasting, or working with a large spreadsheet — you can see a significant benefit if you add a second monitor. But for most programming tasks, the benefits are going to be minimal (but still there).
After another study was recently published by some researchers at the University of Utah, Jeff Atwood took the time to put together a summary of the studies of all the studies we could find — a “a one-stop-shop for research data supporting the idea that, yes, having more display space would in fact make you more productive”. In case you couldn’t tell, Jeff is a big fan of multi-monitor setups:
I have three monitors at home and at work. I’m what you might call a true believer. I’m always looking for ammunition for fellow developers to claim those second (and maybe even third) monitors that are rightfully theirs under the Programmer’s Bill of Rights.
The Subjective Claims
If you read the comments on Jeff’s article, you’ll see that, despite the lack of empirical evidence that programming tasks will significantly benefit from multiple monitors, many programmers are pretty attached to idea:
Leon Mergen: “People who claim there is no benefit (or little benefit) in programming with multiple monitors, obviously haven’t really expercienced it.”
SB: “Have you ever actually used (like, for many months/years) multiple LCDs? … I don’t know how a programmer could go from multi-LCD setup to single display & not claim some, even if minor, productivity dropoff.”
Brian: “I personally find that in my case having a second monitor is ALWAYS more convenient and increases productivity.”
This morning I finally ran across a paper which talks about these subjective benefits. Jonathan Grudin’s Partitioning Digital Worlds: Focal and Peripheral Awareness in Multiple Monitor Use has some interesting insights. Grudin interviewed 18 people who used multiple-monitor setups, and came to the conclusion that:
A second monitor improves efficiency in ways that are difficult to measure yet can have substantial subjective benefit.
One of his interesting observations was that it’s not just about the screen real-estate, it’s also about the partitioning (emphasis mine):
A strong demonstration that multiple monitors can be more about partitioning than about increasing space is provided by the two participants who dock their constantly synchronizing palmtop computers next to their desktop monitors. One keeps his calendar visible on the palmtop, the other keeps email visible. The increase in space provided by the palmtop display is not significant and there is no information on the palmtop that is not available to the desktop computer. The value is in having instant access to a resource in a known location in peripheral vision.
This the same conclusion that Jeff made after seeing the results of a small, informal multiple monitor productivity study: two monitors is better than one large monitor.
Another interesting finding in Grudin’s paper was just how much people hate to use the taskbar or Alt-Tab to switch windows:
Given the ease of minimizing and restoring windows, why bother with a second monitor? Repeatedly, people indicated that they considered it a relief not to have to use buttons, “escaping from the need to Alt-Tab.” The ability to avoid a few keystrokes is welcomed with great subjective enthusiasm, although it might be difficult to objectively measure an efficiency gain.
Perception vs. Reality
To me, this really captures what the argument’s all about. It’s not necessarily about actually being more productive — perceived productivity is just as important. It reminds me of Bruce Tognazzini’s famous finding on the relative speed of the mouse vs. the keyboard:
We’ve done a cool $50 million of R & D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:
- Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
- The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the basis for many user/developers’ belief that the keyboard is faster.
In my experience, many people who love multiple monitors are the same people who are obsessed with knowing every keyboard shortcut in their text editor, and who can’t live without mouse gestures in Firefox.
Don’t get me wrong. Even if the benefits are unproven, minimal, or even non-existent (as in the mouse vs. keyboard case) — it doesn’t really matter. The most important thing is that you, as a programmer, have the tools that you want to do your job. I definitely don’t question the productivity benefits of being happy.