eekim.com: EEK Speaks

Fri, Nov 23, 2007

Productivity, Working Big, and Spatial Awareness #

My colleague, JeffShults, has a saying: "Work big." Jeff is a space guru, as many of you who have participated in a BlueOxenAssociates workshop know, as most of my events have been at his different spaces. The most glaring feature of his space are the huge, movable work walls. (MQE)

Working big is important even when we're working small -- at our desks in front of our computers, for example. I've cited speculation and a study on the productivity gains from using larger screens. I recently ran across CliveThompson's New York Times magazine article that cited a similar study by MaryCzerwinski at Microsoft. (MQF)

On the bigger screen, people completed the tasks at least 10 percent more quickly - and some as much as 44 percent more quickly. They were also more likely to remember the seven-digit number, which showed that the multitasking was clearly less taxing on their brains. Some of the volunteers were so enthralled with the huge screen that they begged to take it home. In two decades of research, Czerwinski had never seen a single tweak to a computer system so significantly improve a user's productivity. (MQG)

Thompson makes a key point in his article: Productivity in an interrupt-driven world seems to be closely related to our ability to switch and remember different contexts. Bigger screens allow you to take advantage of spatial awareness to switch and remember different contexts. (MQH)

There's a corollary to this regarding complex problems. I'm convinced that the primary value of graphical facilitation is not the VisualLanguage used to capture ideas, but the relationship created between ideas and space. In other words, you'll remember the discussion around an idea better if you remember that it was the conversation that was captured on the lower right hand side of the screen or wall. This belief has greatly eased my stress when DialogMapping, as ultimately, I see my task as building spatial memory. (MQI)

That's not to say that VisualLanguage isn't important. It is, and fortunately, there's a fantastic community of folks who are exploring it. The better news is that many of these folks will be converging in SanFrancisco on January 27-29, 2008 for the VizThink conference. (MQJ)

/collaboration | Posted at 11:49pm

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EEK Speaks

A blog about collaboration, community-building, and the various goings-on at Blue Oxen Associates, with occasional digressions on food and other vital matters.