E2.0 Usability secret- hint, use two monitors

By Daniel O'Leary posted 06-03-2010 22:29

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The secret to productivity is having at least two monitors, preferably large enough to comfortably run multiple programs on each monitor.Such a simple idea right? I bet that most of you still slave away over a 14 inch laptop, or a single monitor, desperatley trying to mange SharePoint,Firefox,Word, some spreadsheets, LOLCATS, email, and promises of billions of dollars from a Nigerian prince, all at the same time.

BEFORE: My screen with only 1 monitor. Is this bad?

Why dual monitors versus one giant one? Because on 1 monitor, window mangement becomes a massive headache. With 2, you can leave items comfortably running all at once, often in the background. I had tried and failed miserably with a giant 24 incher before moving to dual 22s, a massive increase in productivity. Plain and simple, monitors are a bottleneck, often forcing a person to dig through all the content on screen to try and find the next program or item they are looking for. With two of them, you can greatly reduce that headache.

As Lifehacker.com notes, "Survey after survey shows that whether you measure your productivity in facts researched, alien spaceships vaporized, or articles written, adding an extra monitor will give your output a considerable boost — 20 percent to 30 percent, according to a survey by Jon Peddie Research."

In the ECM and E2.0 world, this is especially true. Now more than ever, you have multiple programs, web pages, emails, IMs, tweets, and wikis all open at the same time. It's SO simple, but most companies haven't embraced this. The major missing factor was a lack of a decent video card, but now even the most budget desktops can accept a cheap (often $50 or less) video card with support for two monitors. A second monitor itself is also a cheap investment, normally less than $175 if you catch a deal.

AFTER: LincDoc, tweets, e-mail, rain-meter, all happily existing on two monitors

Think about how many times you have lost a document or email, on your own monitor! Super embarrasing. It's OK, happens to everyone. Now, multiply that over your entire organization, per person, per day. You can see, the ROI is huge. If you haven't yet implemented E2.0 or are looking into SharePoint or ECM, make sure this is part of your plan.

Personal Note:
1) I used to charge people thousands for this advice. Comical now, but they paid for the time it took to show them how this could work. Oh the good old days.
2) I've tested this with all flavors of Windows, OSX, and Ubuntu, and all are supported. Go nuts.

#usability #ECM #e2.0 #SharePoint #changemanagement

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