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PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
jpatokal writes "The New York Times confirms what we've suspected all along: PowerPoint makes you dumb. In a new essay, information theorist Edward Tufte outlines why PowerPoint 'forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension.' The Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA agrees, noting that the slides produced by engineers to report on the wing damage were so confusing that 'a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation.'" Tufte's essay (and the shuttle/PowerPoint critique) has been available for sale since earlier this year, but the NYT article gives a greater sampling of its content than Tufte's website does.
...yet Open Office Impress copies all these flaws faithfully.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
It's a people problem. I do and watch scientific presentations as a part of my job and I am constantly appalled at the low quality of presentations.
There are few simple rules on how to make a good presentation: 1) Use a projector - stop using transparencies, 2) avoid text on your slides at all costs 3) use plenty of full colour figures and simple animation but don't overdo it and 4) rehearse your presentation so that you know it by heart - nothing irritates me as much as someone who just reads his slides to the audience.
The owls are not what they seem
What I find annoying is when you get those wannabe technophiles who think because they have a flashie animation and a cool sound they somehow have a good presentation.
It makes you not think of the content. "Here is plane, with a major design fault" BONG CRASH...laughter, no wonder.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
Their powerpoint slide giving evidence of illegal copying of code into linux is a perfect example of this.
The real problem is that the NASA engineers choose the wrong means of communication, when trying to explain what I would suspect to be a rather complicated situation.
Who's fault is that?
You can say a lot about the guys at Redmond, but I doubt their PowerPoint team has any rocket scientists associated with them.
*pun intended*
A complicated and information rich report will always have to be read to be understood.
PowerPoint is useful for summarizng data, Assisting a speaker and other helpful functions.
So saying that PowerPoint makes you dumb makes no sense. It's a tool. If you use it in the wrong way then you already are dumb.
Kids can stick screwdrivers into electrical plugs. But do screwdrivers make kids dumb?
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
The truth is that only dumb people use PowerPoint. Smart people are bored to tears when dumb people force them to watch a PP presentation.
What scares me is that the schools are actually teaching and using PowerPoint!
It is not the tool that makes people dumb, it is the people using the tool.
n d-misinform strategies that started the whole problem?
Hey, remember this one? "Guns don't kill people, people do".
Why do people insist on blaming the tool instead of the people who wield them?
Perhaps (and this is where I betray my bias against sales people), it is sales people who started using Powerpoint in simple gloss-over-all-details-in-a-strategy-to-confuse-a
This is the same problem when people start blaming Windows for every little problem, some of which, of course are well deserved, but it merely shifts the blame from proper responsible network/system administration to the product itself.
Or is it that Microsoft is evil because it is hellbent on creating these simpler tools that don't do enough to prevent people from doing stupid things with them? Or is it that because the tools are easy to use it attracts stupid people to use them instead of using another set of tools that are harder to use and therefore requires more thought and effort?
Quite frankly, it's not just Powerpoint, it could have been any other slideshow presentation program. That Powerpoint is the most commonly used slideshow presentation program made by the evil Microsoft makes it an easy target.
If the proper information was not communicated by the slides, maybe, just MAYBE the people who created them are to blame? Maybe?
All of the replies I've read so far seem to miss the point of the article (that they may or may not have read). Briefly stated, by only allowing a mimimal amount of data with only one obvious conclusion, presentations are skipping the analytical process.
Let's say a presentation was done about shipping lanes in the pacific ocean. There are millions of combinations of potential routes, but all routes are essentially 'dumbed down' to either arrows or circles. The presenter's opinion is the only one that will fit on screen and the presentation must be tailored to whatever conclusion the presenter has made. PowerPoint is the method of getting an audience to agree with obvious solutions - because when you only have a single piece of data on the screen, that is the only conclusion you can make.
I don't think that the method of using a projector and presentations is to blame. I think the problem is we can't fit any real statistics, design or model schematics onto the presentation in a viewable format. What if the web was 320x 240 resolution, with a next button at the bottom of each page?
I think we need to start using UML in presentations. Universal Markup Language is able to model any data or action flow in a way that is readily apparent to most people. There are some specific features that take a bit of training (inheritance or reference) when discussing code, but it is always more comprehensible than one arrow pointing to a box. I may get flamed for the last comment, but realize that I actually mean "you comprehend the data" instead of you "saw a box and remembered it"
I agree. PowerPoint makes us dumb because it disallows independent evaluation, thought, logical processes and retention of information or assessment related data.
If I've had a good idea of how to present something, I haven't been stopped by Powerpoint yet. The reason 98% of all presentations look crappy is because a) The maker don't know how to make a good presentation or b) The maker doesn't know the subject well enough to make a good presentation. Then again, the default "Click here to add text" don't exactly help either.
;). And if you know consulting firms, when they felt we managed to do a very good presentation, I think we did something right...
The key is to have figures. Good figures, not the first piechart you found in Excel. Figures should explain things that'd be difficult to put down in words. If not, key points. Never ever put the full text on the slide. If you're going to send it out, make a PDF of the full text instead. In general, forget animations. Please. Unless it significantly adds to the clarity, not the "I know powerpoint"-l33tness.
The best rule is KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. And yes, I've stood in front of a consulting firm and presented our thesis work to them (long story, but kinda cool that the consultants consult us
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
1) Oral presentations with no slide back-up.
This can only be worse, unless using powerpoint the presenter sees his job as "orally supporting a visual presentation", instead of the other way around. I mean, no matter how bad graphical data is, it must be better than no data at all. Plus having a slide behind the presenter can help one look back at the sequence of thought, and appreciate how many angles were explored.
2) Presentation of a full, dense and well structured textual report.
Such a thing was made to read, and perhaps talked about, not be presented. To use it raw in a public forum would require IMHO that either everyone reads the report before coming in, or that the presenter shows the conclusions and tells everyone "trust me, I have 250 pages of 10-point print to back it up".
Reminds me of the old Churchill saying about Democracy: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
"Electropolitical Engineering". I can put together a ppt for management at work and pursuade them of most any point I want to. I always feel dishonest doing this, but it's the culture (Like the CAIB report describes). The presentations I am most ashamed of are those where I was forced to do this, because some PHB had sold upper PHBs on a completely idiotic scheme. The problem is, as has been pointed out, it's not PowerPoint it's PHBs. I have wondered if the two terms overlap in more than mnemonic ways....
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
I remember one time around 1995 when my new boss called me in to her office.
She: we're going to run the company Christmas party.
Me: OK.
She: And we're all giving Powerpoint presentations during the party.
Me: What!!??
She: You're going to give a presentation on why we're going to take away everyone's Macs and make them use Windows.
Her presentation was truly horrible; she printed out speaker's notes and handed them out in advance, then read the word for word. You could almost hear the snap-crackle-pop of brain cells commiting apoptosis throughout the room. I actually had a pretty good response. I didn't give my presentation out (so that resistance couldn't be prepared) and I worked hard to keep the audience off balance by taking the flow of topics in unexpected directions and driving my point home with humor (home-made and specifically targetted cartoons, ironic examples). Basically, I had to keep them laughing before they could take out their knives and carve me into fish bait.
The main thing I learned from this is that Powerpoint presentations are not dissertations. They really just props that are used in verbal communication.
You have to plan your talk, use the presentation to keep it on track and provide examples to back your talk up. If you have to resort wacky text animations to try to hold people's attention you're lost. I use simple color schemes, usually just black and white, and only ever use two build styles: build point by point and occasionaly appear all at once to vary the pace. In an effective presentation, you must make your audience focus on you, your ideas, your body language, where you want to take them. Trying to understand an effective presentation by looking at the powerpoint is like trying to infer the plot of a Shakespeare play by looking at the scenery.
If you want to create a complete, self contained package of ideas, a slide show is not what you want. You want to create a white paper.
Powerpoint is very useful as an aid; I try to be prepared to give the talk even if the projector is broken. The biggest problem with PowerPoint presentations I see is that people don't use them this way. They try to shoehorn more information into them than can effectively fit. The point at which people's brain cells begin to die is well before the point where you can put enough information into them to persuade or inform them. Used as the primary focus of a presentation, they do make people functionally stupid, by reducing their engagement in the topic, shoving a simplistic representation of reality down their throats.
Of course, for some managers it's an effective crutch. They really have a simplistic view of the world that pretty much is summed up by what you can fit in a Powerpoint presentation. They dress it up with animations and fancy backgrounds. There's also an element of cowardice. Peopel are afraid of public speaking, so they'd rather have their audience looking at the handout or the projection screen than at them. That's why Powerpoints are so boring. An effective public presentation is like a high-wire act. You don't expect the performer to fall, but the possibility keeps your attention riveted.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Seriously, for a site with a population of folk who think they're smart - an awful lot of bullshit gets spouted.
From all the people who think powerpoint is evil, get a grip. I want to give BRIEFing to people on a topic. Powerpoint does the job admirably since it's easier to use for text than paint-shop.
I can also then send on the Powerpoint slides to people so they have a bite size summary they can double check information on.
Bad workmen blame the tools.
... It depends who uses powerpoint. I'm in a school where most of our work has to be presented to the rest of the class, in 10 / 20 minutes usually. Most people still don't use Powerpoint (a Good Thing (tm) I think, forces us to actually listen to our classmates instead of just looking at the pretty pictures).
;-) )
There is one particular jerk (that I can't stand by the way) who insists on doing ALL his presentations on powerpoint, even the 3-minutes summaries. Shitloads of text, colors, graphs, quotes, transitions, etc... At the end of the show, you are still wondering what was the point. (+ his laptop seems to be misconfigured, and each time he has to fight for 10 minutes to get the damn projector to work. Hilarious)
But one of my teachers used only Powerpoint slides, all year long; he couldn't make himself clearer, and those presentations were excellent.
The USER is to blame, not the software. Still, because powerpoint presentations still have the "new-cool-wow-shiny" factor playing in their favor, some teachers are impressed by mediocre presentations, giving marks way above what they should be. ( Why, yes, that's why I'm getting an iBook + Keynote for next year
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
definitely NO graphs
:-).
mmmKay, so I just finished making 24-hour emergency patient's overviews in graph AND tabular, for a LOT of critical parameters (or so I'm told, I'm no doctor
It takes 1 landscape A4 to put these in tab, but that A4 would be filled from its left top to its right bottom with numbers, numbers, numbers.
It takes 1 1/3 A4 to represent the same info in five large resolution, highly readable graphs. For some reason, people preferred to keep the graph version in, and I know why: peaks can be read out in an instance of a second.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Is it that PowerPoint makes us stupid, or that only the stupid use PowerPoint?
The answer, as usual, lies between - - it's that the tool provides an outlet for the stupidity that lies within us all.
Some of us, aware that we live in a Dilbertesque world, shake our heads sadly at the spectacle of a comrade droning through the narration of their cookie-cutter presentation, hunched over their laptop in the back corner of the room while the rest of us try valiantly to stay awake in the dimly lit conference room. After it's over, a still-conscious VP nudges the CEO to let him know that it's time to move to the next agenda item. The CEO nods, says "thank-you for that, uh, insightful look at blah-blah-blah," and the presenter wonders whether she's on step closer to the executive suite.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
So all that Tufte really says in his pamphlet is that most people really can't put together a presentation if their life depended on it, but then their boss gives them PowerPoint, and suddenly they think they have a holy grail.
Regardless of how much information you construct in your charts, displaying it on a XGA (1024x768) projector will ruin it. Don't blame the medium for the faults that really should be blamed on the information gatherer / analyzer / organizer.
If you print out those presentations at 300DPI, then you can fit a lot of information on them. Somehow, people always forget that bulleted slides used to come with handouts chock full of the data the slides referred to.
As for the Columbia tradgedy, blaming the death of our nation's explorers on software to produces presentations instead of the incompetance of the people using it to perform their job is irresponsible. If those engineers couldn't communicate, NASA should have spent the money required to train them better.
Tufte has his own reasons for publishing his material. He believes that there is an optimal way to organize data. You can follow his methods without burning PowerPoint... You just have to organize what you are presenting, and determine how to best present it before you even launch PowerPoint.
It never ceases to amaze me how much time it saves to take a few sheets of paper and a pencil and work out what the important message you are trying to deliver is before you write your presentation to deliver it. Just like with writing software, planning is the most time-saving step.
It helps to know where you are going before you get on the highway.
The problem being discussed is that powerpoint cannot adequately convey information on complex issues. Trying to solve this problem by not meeting to discuss the issues at all is not a solution to the problem.
Alphanos
Such presentations are very simular to TV news. If you ask people after watching a TV news broadcast, they in general answer that they feel informed. But if you ask them about what was in the newscast, they remember very little.
PowerPoint presentations have the same effect, they give the subjective impression of being informative, but the audience learn very little from them.
Your advice are fine if you want to be popular. If you'd rather want to be informative, here are some better advice:
- Blackboards rule, if have the skills. But they require a lot of the teacher in organization talent, multitasking, and handwriting. For most people, transparents are better. Handwritten is best, if you can write so everybody can read it.
- The basis should be the oral presentation, the slides should support it by providing structure. This mean they should be mostly text, but not much. A good slide has 5 plus/minus 2 bullets (yes, it is cliche, but it works), each containing 1-3 words highliting a point in your presentation. Never complete sentenses, they are an aid to your oral presentation, not a replacement for it. Using handwritting helps avoid overloading the slides.
- A bit of carfully chosen color is fine. Avoid animations at all cost. Some topics will need diagrams, but remember, you can not actually present raw data in this form, only the conclusions and highlights. Keep the diagrams few, and if you have any drwaing skills, prefer handdrawn diagrams.
- You will obviously need to know what information you want to get across, and you should attempt the presentation at least once. But do not learn it by rote, unless you are an actor or other professional. For most people, a bit of improvision on the spot makes the presentation feel more alive to the audience.
Of course, if your job depends on a positive evaluation from the audience, or you are doing this as part of an entertainment gig, follow the other guys advice. The audience will feel entertained, and give you high marks (or suggest friend to hire you). My advice only pertain to the, perhaps rare, case when you have some information it is important to you to deliver to your audience.The real problem with PPT is that it's a crutch for people who don't know how to present information. A presenation should have two components, at least: the speech, or text, and the visual data. The visual data should illuminate ideas and expand on data.
Consider a news article that has a few accompanying images or a chart. The visuals are a very small part, perhaps 5%. The text contains the information.
Steve Jobs is an excellent of a presenter who knows that the slide show is just the show behind him. He will put up a slide with a single word on it, and then speak about that for five minutes. The slideshow isn't the important thing, it's a very minor component. Or, consider Jack Ryan's presentation in Hunt for Red October.
"A picture is worth a thousand words" should be understood as 'A picture needs a thousand words.'
Unfortunately, too many presenters have gotten it backwards. They try to put all their ideas on screen, relying on the visuals to speak for them. And then they learn that they have to reduce the information on-screen (word-wise at least), but they don't learn to shift the extracted information to their mouth (or accompanying texts).
The potato it is uninformed.
It seems most of us can agree that PowerPoint makes it too easy to make bad, form-over-function slide presentations. But why not produce tools that help the author check the readability/confusability of the slides. This scoring system could work on the slide-pack level or on the slide level. I can also see ways in which the scoring system could provide advice on correcting the problem.
I see the scoring system as checking the following 6 dimensions of readability. It should probably score each dimension separately because a bad score on each of the different dimensions yields a different recommendation for correction.
1. Legibility analysis: We've all sees slides that use illegible 10 point (or smaller) lettering. Sometimes small type is justified (e.g., for a necessarily complex data table that will be handed out to the audience) but usually it is bad.
2. Contrast Analysis: Yellow text on a white background is bad! Using purple and maroon to color-code two data lines is bad. A simple analysis of the colors in a slide would give one a contrast score and could even provide recommendations on how to move colors away from each other.
3. Object Density: Some slides are too dense. If we analyze the number of "features" on the slide or the ratio of information to whitespace, then we can give a density score. An appropriate score might vary -- I've noticed that German engineers (and myself) like information-dense slides.
4. Text-to-Graphics ratio: Slides with 100% words are bad and ones with 100% graphics (no words) are bad IMO. Scoring the ratio of words to graphic features might help people see if they are near the sweet-spot (whatever that is). The only problem with this dimension is that it is hard to assess the text-to-graphics ratio in information content terms -- one can add useless grpahics to a wordy slide and think that one has improved the text-to-graphics ratio.
5. Word Reuse: Repetition is good. If every slide uses different words, with no word overlap between slides, then audience comprehension will drop. This dimension can also catch terminology consistency problems -- such as when the presentation agenda slide uses different words than the slide titles for the respective sections.
6. Jargon Use: By scoring the slides against word-frequency data, we can detect the use of too many rare words in the presentation. There might be different word-frequency datasets for basic English, college English, mechanical engineering, medical research, etc. that lets the presentor see if their slides are right for the audience.
I'm sure that others might suggest other dimensions.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Tufte claimed that Microsoft's ubiquitous software forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension. For example, the low resolution of a PowerPoint slide means that it usually contains only about 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading.
The purpose of the bullet items is to serve as a rough roadmap for the listener and to help the speaker not lose his thread; it is not to let the listener read what the speaker is saying anyway. And, of course, presentations don't just consist of bullet items, they also contain graphs, diagrams, and photos.
Yes, strange as that may seem, you are supposed to listen during a presentation. In fact, if you listen carefully and the talk is at all reasonable, you should be able to ignore the bullet items altogether. But if you doze off for a moment, then the bullet items will help you orient yourself again.
Frankly, I think this beats the alternative of the traditional presentation, which would have someone stand at a podium with no visual aids and reading from a prepared manuscript.
I'll stop using transparencies when I can finally be 100% sure that a) disks won't fail b) projector hardware will be compatible and c) interpreter software will be compatible. Last thing I want to do before a critical presentation is spend 15 minutes trying to figure why my laptop won't talk to their projector or why their PDF viewer isn't displaying the fonts properly.
bkr
The problems come from Microsoft limitations. No one ever said that hand drawn transparencies made you dumb. In fact, such stuff once was the mark of profesionalism in presentations and this is why we have software to do the same thing. It's Microsoft's rule set for generating the slides that's at fault, not the means of communication itself. There's nothing wrong with software that gives you a slide and notes layout to design a presentation. There is something wrong with Microsoft's rule set.
Impress does copy some of that rule set, but not all and offers other ways to do things and is free to grow. One important difference is the ease or reuse. Things that go into Microsoft's Power Point don't come back out very well. Try cutting and pasting an image out of Power Point to anything but power point and you will find the image qaulity significantly reduced. This degradation of information eliminates information reuse and waste's the user's time. Exporting to html and other recognized information sharing formats is also clunkier with Microsoft. Sun's underlying file system is much better organized and well thought out. Thier cut and paste tools work much better and the overall rule set for constructing slides is a little easier. The user community can recognize the flaws and correct them much quicker than Microsoft's beleagured programmers who strugle with all of Power Point's 10 year old legacy code and poor underlying structure.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
stop using transparencies,
A perfect Steve Barkto! Blame the user, denigrate the competition and pump up the Microsoft way. The only problem in this instance is that you inadvertenly and completely defeat yourself.
Transparacy presentations prove that Power Point sucks. Why is it that these problems were not problems with hand made transpariancies? Because there's no mindless rule set restricting the hand of an artist hand painting a transparency. For years, hand made transparencies were a mark of profesionalism. This is why slide making programs were invented. Microsoft's constricting rules, combined with the ease of type setting an image, create bad presentations that look good, the worste possible case. The amazing thing is that Power Point's building process, like most Microsoft junk, has remained exaclty as it was hastily flung together ten years ago. All Microsoft has done is add "features" for onramenting the poorly done job. It is true that effective presentations can be made though Microsoft's tool, it just requires too much effort and that's why it makes you dumb. Microsoft has concentrated on the wrong things and won't be able to make a reasonable tool to compete against free alternatives from Sun, KDE and Gnome, which also can use a fancy and expensive projector.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...in the de-evolution of intelligent life in the corporate world.
When the candidate begins publishing Word documents on internal websites they're ready for the final step.
...or...
I'll go ahead and stick up for PowerPoint. As a university instructor, I use plenty of interactive stuff like simulation exercises and group discussions. Nevertheless, sometimes a lecture is the way to go, particularly when dealing with a complex and unfamiliar body of material.
What is the alternative to PowerPoint (or other slide-show programs) in academia? Hmmm... I remember chalkboard lectures that were hard to read (and I know my handwriting is awful) and often a confusing mess of arrows, half-erased comments, and lists without bullet points to mazke it clear when each item begins. Then there was the time involved in writing the material on the chalkboard/whiteboard and the annoying frequency with with the lecturer (myself included) would talk while writing, thus addressing his/her comments to the board instead of the class.
Then there were overheads. These lost the spontaneity of chalkboard comments, but dramatically improved legibility. Unfortunately, they were also (usually) monochrome -- even when I printed color overheads, I had to be careful since I was paying for my own color ink. Moreover, they lost the ability to change a diagram easily, adding and removing elements to illustrate one's point. Finally, they made it difficult to integrate video or animation, since the overhead projector was likely to be in the way of the film projector or TV.
Enter PowerPoint. Now I have the ability to include video, so when I talk about patterns of voting, I can play campaign commercials that sought to appeal to particular blocs of voters. Saying the economy matters is one thing. Putting up a graph comparing economic performance to vote share in elections is better (but can be confusing without color). Doing both and then watching Reagan's Morning in America ads is best. Powerpoint makes it simpler (though not exactly easy, given its hostility to non-Microsoft video formats) to do this sort of thing.
I disagree with many suggestions made by other comments. My advice:
1. Use color, but try to use style as well and don't rely on red/green differences. Remember, 10% of males in your audience are color-blind.
2. Use text, but not more than six or seven words per subpoint. This is enough to communicate just about any conclusion, and then further subpoints can walk through each element of your argument if needed.
3. Never use anything less than 14 points, preferably at least 18. People in the back of the room and people with less-than-perfect vision need to be able to see.
4. DO NOT MEMORIZE YOUR TALK! I coached speech and debate for years, and while the formal memorized speech has its place, that place is almost never in the type of presentation where you'll be using PowerPoint. Practice your speech until you have an extemporaneous but fairly efficient style.
5. Writing your points is the easy part. Decorating then with visual geegaws is only moderately more taxing. The really hard part is coming up with a real-world example of what your talking about. Once you have the example, use PowerPoint to communicate it with some amount of pizazz. After all, you don't need your audience to remember the particulars of the example (so little text is neeeded); rather, you want them to understand the meaning of whatever point they just wrote down. This is the place for audiovisual dazzle, not your main points...
6. Don't let the flash distract from your points. The key is to follow rule # 5 for examples, but to keep the points themselves distinct and consistent. Don't mix the visual style with which you present text. Don't use distracting animation for anything you want the audience to copy down.
7. Get to the room early and TEST YOUR PRESENTATION on the available equipment. Perhaps the fonts and software on the presentation machine are different from your own. Perhaps the equipment isn't working (see # 8). Perhaps the resolution of the scre
Make cheese not war 8:)
I don't think technology can make a person any dumber or smarter than they already are. People conveyed complex concepts through slideshows, overheads, and chalk n' talk for a long time before Power Point came along. It's up to the presenter to make the message understandable. As a professor of mine once said on presentations, "Tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell it to them. Then tell them what you just told them." I try to follow that "model" in any presentations I give.
Really, people, it's not PP, it's the people. I really think, in a technical talk, that there are really two main points or cruxes that underly the premise of the talk. If not anything else, convey these two points to your audience!! Whether it be just these two points on a PP, or (god forbid) memorizing them (while you're at it, why don't you memorize the whole presentation without the slides!)
Everything else is details, implementation, and analysis. Yes, of course these items are important too, but probably won't be as important to everyone in the room. Print out a copy of that well written report that you typed up before the presentation so that people who are interested can pick up a copy.
And please, don't bore your audience.
Let me reiterate, get those two points to your audience!! Whether it be life threatening or not, the crux of your paper should be conveyed, or else why even do a presentation?
Concerning Xerox and Corel Presentations - "far superior to ppt" - Exactly my point. Better ideas aren't getting a fair trial. I haven't seen these products, and I fully accept your assessment that they are superior. Because MS is a monopoly, I and the PHBs who might benefit have had less opportunity to learn alternatives.
..." Again, exactly my point. I hate nearly square rooms in my house. Why? Cuz if something doesn't fit in one room, it doesn't fit in any room.
Concerning "I hate curved walls
It's all about choice, and the lack of it.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
Many people make bullshit presentations that twist the facts and obfuscate the most important points. Most people these days use PowerPoint (or something like it) to make presentations. From this we conclude that it's PowerPoint's fault.
Please
Krill
...not PowerPoint itself.
I have taken several presentation classes, and agree wholeheartedly with much of the advice given by the other posters: structure your information logically, use graphics whenever possible, limit the number of words per page, and avoid distracting graphical gimmicks. When you follow those guidelines and spend the time practicing your verbal style, you get good results giving your talk to the audience. However, the real problem lies with how PowerPoint is actually used in business -- namely, as a form of documentation, not merely as a visual aid.
As a case in point, I recently had to give a technical brief at the end of a program to the customer and my management. The problem was that although several members of senior management considered the briefing important enough to ask to be invited...none of them actually showed up! Of course, they wanted a copy of the presentation so they could read it at a later point. If I had constructed the presentation according to the guidelines mentioned above -- minimal text, etc. -- they would have gotten almost no information from it at all. So, anticipating this outcome, I did my best to use as many graphics as I could, but also included enough short statements so that someone could follow the outline of the talk I actually gave that day.
Personally, I think this situation is endemic in engineering. I have seen presentations circulated for years because they contained information which was never documented anywhere else. Although it would be far preferable to construct proper notes or white papers to go along with every presentation, I don't know of any managers who are willing to spend the extra money on putting together those artifacts -- or, for that matter, any engineers who have the spare time to craft them on their own. The best solution would be to record and archive the actual talk itself and pass those files around instead of the slides...but I think we have a long way to go before the verbal content is seen as the truly important element in a presentation, as it ought to be.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
Mod parent up! (I've always wanted to say that)
Ironically, the satiric slidewarization of Tufte's essay communicates his main points better than the NYT article or other Slashdot posts. Slideware in the generic sense is the problem, not just Microsoft's implementation: low data density, choppy and linear flow, deeply hierarchical structure, data ends up broken up to prevent comparisons and analysis, etc.
I hate most slideware presentations as much as the next guy, but I have seen them done well. If you use higher resolution projectors (at least 1024x768) and have a good speaker that correctly uses the slides as supplemental information instead of an outline then it's not all bad.
(And yes, I have read the whole essay. Out of curiosity I bought it along with one of Tufte's other books a few months ago. It has some good points, but I was dissapointed by the lack of depth and convincing analysis.)
Powerpoint does not make people, or presentations, stupid. It just makes it too easy for stupid people to put a bad presentation together. In my last job, we put together excellent presentations by doing them the old-fashioned way-a big team, lots of writing and editing, and numerous preparatory presentations. I've seen other people pull this off pretty well, and even know someone whose job mostly involves doing excellent Powerpoint presentations instead of letting someone do bad ones.
Laziness is the real problem with Powerpoint. Any idiot can toss a presentation together in five minutes, add in a nice theme, and then spend another ten minutes on effects.
Worst of all is that some colleges are now implementing department-wide Powerpoint slides to go with lectures instead of letting professors just handle it themselves. I was in a programming class that started off really well, because the projector was broken and the professor used the blackboard. A month in the projector got fixed and the slides went up, within two weeks half the class dropped.
The bullet list is a good way to summarize and highlight data. The problem is that people have become used to putting ALL of the data into bullet lists. This leads to arbitrarily cutting statements short, or leaving them out entirely, to fit into the format and space that Powerpoint provides.
This is why Powerpoint makes you dumb.
It also seems to make the people looking at them dumb. I know that I sometimes come out of meetings feeling dumber for the experience.
Tufte is focused very much on data density. I was at the presentation last week and noticed that many people there are webdesigners. The point that Tufte is really trying to make is often lost: that higher density media - like paper! - is better at presenting data than a computer screen or Powerpoint slide.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, the problem is not with PowerPoint -- it's with the people who use it. It would be tempting to say, "See, M$ makes you dumb, use OpenOffice", but in this case, the Evil Empire (tm) is not to blame.
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