Whether you're enhancing your home office setup or upgrading your workplace, a great place to start is an extra monitor. For those who use dual monitors its easy to claim that it will boost your productivity but is there any evidence of this?

In a New York times report of a Jon Peddie research survey he found that dual monitors increased the productivity of the user by 20-30 percent. The study showed that a second monitor drastically reduced the time it takes to complete a wide variety of tasks including:

• Data entry
• Drafting an email
• Comparing products or related documents
• leaving a chat box open while continuing with work
• spreading large documents across multiple monitors
• Comparing updated images or documents to the origional

The IT supplier Dell has conducted their own studies into whether or not dual monitors are in fact better for productivity. The company tested two different areas: the size of the screen and the screen count. The most interesting of these studies was the results of the screen count testing.

The subjects were asked to perform specific tasks, some using one monitor while the rest used two. The test determined a number of things including:

• In data collection tasks where the users had to collect text and images from a document the dual monitor users could use the secondary monitor to display the document without swapping windows. In turn this meant the average user spent 5% less time looking at the reference.
• Dell found that on average the users with dual screens were able to complete tasks 2.5 seconds faster than users with one monitor.
• When asked how they felt about the setup the users felt that dual screens were better as it was easier for them to find information, and in general were more pleasant to use.

Although the numbers aren't huge it still shows that having two monitors will increase the users productivity however slightly it all mounts up to create a significant increase in production. According to the University of Utah, a second monitor can save each employee 2.5 hours each day if they use both screens to assist with every task. If this metric was applied to 30 employees it can save almost 375 hours a week, this in turn can save a company thousands of pounds a year at the cost a a few hundred pound for new monitors which would obviously increase the companys' profit margin

If you're ready to up your productivity with a seamless multi screen setup, get in touch with us today at social@adnsgroup.com or give us a call on 01642 248 750.