How do I set up my workspace with external displays?
You know the situation. We are back to our offices and universities and come back to find spaces set up for ‘hot desking’ with external monitors which change each time we come in depending on who is in that day. A large review of the literature on the impact of hot desking to organisational life from 2021 found that:
Overall, the findings showed that while open-plan workplace designs may offer financial benefits for management, these appear to be offset by the intangible costs associated with the negative effects on workers.
For students at universities the experience is not always positive either,
Students […]work early or late to secure suitable hotdesks, perform important tasks in locations other than the study site, incur co-working space and home office costs, etc. to cope with the themes of uncertainty, lack of control and lack of workspace continuity associated with hotdesking.
Research aside, as we go about our daily life back at university it can be helpful to understand the process of setting up a hot desk as you may need to do this many times in a week depending on who is in on that day and who is using the desks. This article aims to offer you not just the technical information you need but also the ergonomic information that will support your physical and and psychological wellbeing. This can counteract some of the less positive effects of hot desking policy.
Do you know anything about the ergonomics of it all? How your dominant eye plays a role? Do you know which is your dominant eye for that matter? Do you know what options you have available for display set up and how to choose between them? Or do you just get into work bleary eyed with your coffee, plug your laptop in and hope for the best without giving ergonomics, your poor body, or your eye sight any thought? Well, there is a lot to think about and it is not just about keystrokes and cables. Below is a self assessment infographic to help you learn the parameters you have to consider each time you are at a new desk.
You aim is a neutral and relaxed posture.
A poor angle leads to neck and shoulder discomfort, while the wrong distance can contribute to eyestrain. A useful research finding is that looking upwards (above the horizontal eye line) is more tiring than looking downwards.
For example, when using a display that is oriented to the “portrait” position make sure that the top of the screen is not at a level higher than your eyes, it is better that it is too low than too high. For people who wear corrective lenses — bi-focals, tri-focals, or progressive lenses — it may be more comfortable to place the top of a display slightly below eye level.
Looking at far distances causes less eyestrain than close work. The muscular effort required to focus on objects at close distances is what strains the eyes. In the situation where the recommended viewing distance of 40–70cm does not enable you to see the display clearly it is better to increase font size than force a shorter viewing distance.
Multiple display set up
As with a single display, the focus of ergonomic advice is on maintaining a neutral neck posture — it may help to learn this Alexander Technique instruction: ‘let the neck free to let the head for forward and up to allow the back to lengthen and widen.’ You need to think about 3 things other than posture:
- The percentage of use for display
- The type of work done in each and
- Your dominant eye
Before diving into the technical detail of how to set displays up, reflect on how you will use each display. Assess a percentage of use for each and what type of work you will do in each. Do you use one display more than the other? Is one primarily used for data entry? Is one used primarily to reference documents? The infographic above make light work of remembering all the parameters.
The set up I will go through in detail here is for Windows 10, there will be resources at the end of this article for the Mac set up also. You have your laptop (and your coffee) ready to set up your hot desk for the day. Let’s assume that you are doing this for the first time.
First thing you need to do is to select the Start +P keys at the same time.
A screen like the one below will appear on your screen.
You need to understand the difference between duplicate and extend.
When ‘duplicated’ the desktop is duplicated (including resolution) on more than one display. This setup is useful for presenting to an audience. When ‘extended’ the desktop is extended across multiple displays; each extended display has its own unique desktop area. This setup is the one you will want most often to provide additional desktop space. So if you find the setup on your desk for the day on ‘duplicate’ swap it to ‘extend desktop 1 and 2’. You do this most easily by using the Windows logo key and the letter P shortcut which pops up this menu, select Extend.
You may need a way of knowing how the operating system is labelling each display. For this you ask the system to ‘identify’ the displays: select Start > Settings > System > Display > Rearrange your displays, then select Identify. A number appears on the screen of the display it’s assigned to.
So, conceptually you need to understand that the operating system is mirroring the physical location of your displays and enabling you, through the display settings menu, to arrange your workspace in a way that suits your way of working.
Your laptop should be able to remember your display settings for a specific display setup. If it does not, you will have to reset them, and in the ‘Multiple Displays’ options tick ‘Remember window locations based on monitor connection’. Then, next time you connect in the same set up the settings will be remembered. If you want a step by step guide on anything Windows, always go to Microsoft first. They offer acurate expert resources which are updated regularly. The one for multiple displays can be found here. It is short and to the point, it will remind you of key settings whilst you are learning how to do this in different contexts, and also contains a video that walks you through the whole thing showing the displays in both the physical and the operating system realms.
Below are two short videos that offer a summary of the technical set ups for both Windows and Mac operating systems. Think about your poor body and your eye sight before you do anything technical, and don’t be lazy. If you need to reset things to make them more ergonomically sound, take the time to learn how. One day of bad posture will not do you any harm, but repeated laziness in setting up a hot desk for the day will cause you pain.
