Screen Size and Productivity

So, today in our JOUR289I class, we had a speaker - Dr. Bederson of the University of Maryland's Computer Science department. You can get more information on Dr. Bederson here. In his presentation, he discussed mobile technology - the design challenges and the diversification of mobile devices.

One of the points he made that resonated with me the most was that productivity is directly linked to the size of one's computer screen. Once he said this, I immediately thought of my Intro to Computer Graphics class (what a handy class for this blog!). In that class, we use - I'm going to go ahead and guess the size here, based off the Apple site - 27" iMac desktop computers. While we're working with scanned images and Photoshop files, there's a lot going on all at once. Dr. Bederson stated that the screen size issue came down to window management. He also said that the larger the screen, the less of a demand you put on your short-term memory in order to compare and contrast images and information. Essentially, there's less of a back-and-forth.

That's exactly the advantage that these large desktop computers allow us in our class. When moving from one image to another - creating selections, moving them to another layer on a new document, and editing away - you want to minimize the clicking from one area to another area. You want to be able to be efficient with your time - and all that clicking really does take up your time.

Now what happens when I want to work on my images on my relatively puny 13" Macbook? Good question. Frustration usually ensues. It's not as easy to view everything all at once the way you can on the iMac. And in that sense, it slows you down - way, way down. Often if I've made a mistake in a selection, it takes a few times as long as it would have in my studio class to go back and do it right. Photoshop in itself takes up a lot of space on a screen - you have tons of panels on the right (which can be minimized, BUT, the most of important of which - the layers panel - is always there), the tool bar to the left, and another tool bar on the top that changes based on what tool you are using at that moment. Then, you have the space in the middle of all that jazz to work on your images. And if you're synthesizing multiple images into one, chances are, you are barely squeezing on past each one.

There is one thing that makes my itty-bitty little screen breathe a bit easier. A bit, mind you. The Photoshop in Adobe CS4 has a new feature that allows for docking your images. If you open multiple images they will open in one, and then give you tabs to move between them. That way, you don't have 20 separate images open - just one, with 20 tabs. You can undock and dock as you please. However, I do have a bone to pick. After using CS4 for a few weeks now (in comparison to CS3), I can say that while it does save space, it doesn't exactly let you work as fast. Maybe I haven't figured out yet how to effieciently move between tabs, and maybe that will come with time.

Maybe I need a gigantic iMac...Mom? Dad? Birthday present?