One thing I see a lot in my travels is people who work with electronic drawings and models working on screens that are too small. That makes work harder than it should be.
It's like if you showed up for your first job at an architecture or construction office, and they gave you a coffee table to lay out your paper drawings on. The big sheets would be falling off onto the floor, getting lost, and you'd be wondering why you were having such a hard time reading them, making so many mistakes, etc. Then one day you see a drafting table and your world changes!
Same goes for electronic drawings and models. You need a big workspace - and that means a big screen. Too many people use office-work-oriented screens (like 17" LCDs) when bigger screens are cheap and easy to get, and make construction work that much easier.
That's why I created the Pratt Screen Productivity Index (PSPI). Check it out below. You can figure out your PSPI by adding the diagonal size of every screen on your desk, and then adding 10 points for each screen that is over 22" (the "large-screen bonus" that takes into account the needs of construction/design folks.)
You want your PSPI to be between 40 and 80. Over 80 is fine, but might be overkill. If yours is less than 40, you need to stand up right now, march into your boss' office, and show her this blog posting. She needs to get you another screen, or a bigger screen.
(On a side note, it's trivial to set up multiple monitors these days - so that's recommended also, especially if you can't get a 30" LCD, which admittedly is pretty darn big. The recommended PSPI minimum of 40 pretty much means you'll be on multiple monitors, and that's the point.)
[These are screenshots of a slideshow presentation I gave at Greenbuild 2008.]
