Seeing this NY Times article, I was reminded of one of our key recommendations for boosting productivity in eDiscovery – make sure each lawyer reviewer has multiple monitors. From a capital investment standpoint, multiple monitors are very inexpensive and pay for themselves in a matter of weeks. From the study at the University of Utah:
“At the very least, Professor Anderson said, more monitors cut down on toggling time among windows on a single screen, which can save about 10 seconds for every five minutes of work. If you have more than one monitor, he said, “You don’t have to toggle back and forth. You can take in everything with the sweep of an eye.'”
John Seely Brown used to make the point about multiple monitor productivity by showing Esther Dyson’s office versus Stu Card’s office.
A typical day at Esther Dyson's Office
I had eight screen envy when I saw Stu’s setup (I only had three monitors at the time).
Stu Card's Desktop Command Center
However, if you look closely at Stu’s setup in the lower left you can see the documents he moved off the desktop for the photo shoot. Indeed, multiple monitors aid productivity but they never get rid of the paper.
At Attenex, we recommended at least three screen for productivity and always demoed our product on a four screen system:
Attenex Patterns Demo System
So for a quick productivity boost, add an extra monitor.
Now the next technology boost I want to see is to get the benefit of the terrific resolution of iPads across multiple displays.
Multiple iPads Ganged Together?
Keep dreaming Skip.
