Whenever I hear a good idea that’s not mine, I like to borrow/steal it. One of my favorite “borrowed” ideas from the past year came from my wife’s company. They added a second monitor to everyone’s computer in the office to help reduce the amount of paper printed out. Great idea … so I stole it.
At my company, we started with our Customer Service group. It was an instant hit! They were now able to pull up a faxed/pdf’d/emailed order from a customer on one screen and enter the order into our ERP system on the other (among many other things). It drastically reduced the amount of paper used. But it also improved productivity because if they were interupted by a customer calling in on the phone, they could keep most of the documents they were working on in place and use only one screen to access whatever system was needed to answer the question. — Some people even reported that it was “less stressful” with a 2nd monitor!
Then we hit the Accounting group. Same concepts applied here. Their only complaint was that they couldn’t open two Excel worksheets at the same time and move one on the left screen and one on the right. — I, of course, had to point out that Macs CAN do that, but Windows can’t.
Then the IT department wanted to try this. I was pretty sure it was because they were looking less cool, but agreed anyway. I was wrong … its a very powerful thing for IT people. Admins can open a remote control session on one screen and search a knowledgebase on the other and not have to flip between windows to fix things. Developers can open up code on one screen and preview the results on the other.
So this idea is working its way around the company, but it makes me wonder: is there a point of diminishing returns with this concept? — What if we increased the size of the screens from 17″ to 19″ or 21″? — What if we put THREE monitors on their desks?!!?
Then I stumbled across this little article about the AMAZING Apple 30″ Cinema display and how there is a measurable productivity increase as you give people more screen real-estate. You can access the report here.
I need to go now … I think I just found the justification I was looking for to go out and buy two of these 30″ displays! I think $4000 worth of monitors on my desk would look GREAT!
What people here are saying…