Slashdot Mirror
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.
How do you come from "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'" to "PowerPoint Makes You Dumb"?
.rtf / .pdf (and this story goes right along), but would anyone state that "vi / tex / Acrobat makes you dumb"?
We have seen so much bullshit in plain text / html /
Please, no more...
It's a people problem.
Yes, and it was a "people problem" when ATM's used to pay out the cash before returning your card and people kept laving their cards behind. But sometimes you need to change your software to allow for the "people problems".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It seems the art of delivering a coherent "story" for a message has been lost in this modern day of 10-second soundbites, and flashy presentations, but it's not the medium's fault that the message is confusing, it's the creator of the message.
There are rules for imparting highly-technical information to others who may not be as "up on it" as yourself...
This is hardly an exhaustive list, but I've found them useful guidelines...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
The managers who refuse to read any complex printed document and force everyone to try to encapsulate their ideas into a set of slides with as little text as possible?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
A problem I see every day where I work (60k employees organization) is that PP is used for EVERYTHING, not only presentations. In fact, upper management EXPECTS complex issues to be analyzed with a short Power Point document. Anything longer, they just don't read it.
Power Point makes you dumb by giving you the illusion of performing a deep, logical analysis of an issue, when in fact all you're doing is presenting it in a very superficial way.
In IT everyone is happy about presentations and slides and Powerpoint and stuff.
But when *I* dare say, that all this blablabla stuff makes me a worse programmer because I don't like these neverending discussions and planning and opportunities to listen to execs who feel good by pulling their latest crap out their asses in front of me, here at slashdot I get modded down as someone who's unable to think/work in groups.
I, personally, think groupwork is a innovation killer because innovation comes from controversial thinking and controversial thinking is discussed (sometimes with the colourful-buzzy-buzz help of Powerpoint) in groups until it's gone(!)
However, I sence that IT is fucked up by to much talk anyways. And I dare say that this blablabla-buzzy-buzz-talk is already influlencing my comments here. Buzz-IT has eaten me and shitten me out several times.
Thank you?
4) rehearse your presentation so that you know it by heart
I beg to differ. Do NOT learn your presentation by heart. Make sure you understand the subject. Make sure you know it thoroughly. If your slides are good, just interact with them. Show your audience what you're saying (many people like to SEE it). Short strong words are (imho) necessary on a presentation for the audience to keep focus)
There is nothing more boring then a presentation where somebody just rattles on about a subject. PLUS when you are asked a question, you often forget what you were saying. You loose track of your text like that.
If you have no clue what you are saying, then learn it by heart and watch your audience fall asleep.
Usually, science advances best when information can be exchanged freely. Tufte seems to have forgotten this.
I work in Tokyo, Seoul, and Hong Kong, and I have noticed an interesting trend: Asians (especially Japanese) pack their presentations with enourmous amounts of text, and very convoluted diagrams. In meetings, Asians tend to read through these laboriously heavy presentations, and the audience usually sleeps.
I have made presentations here and there for my Japanese and Korean audiences, and I have often been complimented afterwards on the brevity, clarity, and "to the point" quality of my slides.
I fully agree that presentations should not become policy, nor should they be treated as written documents-- sides are only there to outline and organize a verbal conversation and presentation.
On the other hand, Asians are amazed that I actually prepare 4-5 page (single-spaced) reports to accompany my presentations (I assume because they thought I would try to pack all that text into my presentation and then read it to them).
davejenkins.com |
"So what should we use to make presentations then?"
I tend to use HTML, with big centred titles, and use one of my desktop backgrounds to add some style. It fits easily on a disk, it's easy to add graphics, you've got a full-screen mode on every browser, and when you're done, it can go on a website without making you look like an idiot who uses 150KB graphics to display 10 words.
One thing I notice about lecturers (who actually need to convey information in their slides) is that they tend to use the rolls of acetate, and have "slides" that are several metres long, scrolling down all the time to reveal new information while leaving the last few lines visible for anyone taking notes. You can't do this in Impress, but it's easy enough if you're using HTML.
...is not the fact of the meek not knowing anymore the difference between a brandname of a monopolist ("Powerpoint") and the type of a computerprogramm ("Presentation Programm"), since that in a twisted way in the context of this article can get people convinced that a Microsoft Product makes you dumb and that you should consider using plain text or classic HTML once in a while.
What really pisses me of is the fact that obviously the slashdot crowd uses this monopolists brandname as a synonym for Presentation Programm aswell, without even noticing it. Even though people should know that Powerpoint isn't and never was the best presentation programm.
Then again, we ought to remember that in the US comanies can actually lose their exclusive brandname rights when their product has become synonym for the rest of that product class. Wouldn't that be the case with Powerpoint by now? Any details on this law from US citizens?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I attended one of Tufte's seminars, and I've still got a handout that shows a patient "chart" that Tufte helped design. The patient's name, location, admission date, and the current date are printed clearly at the top of the page, followed by a very brief synopsis. The right 1/3 of the page is a list of notes followed clearly by the initials of the person who entered the note, their role, the time, and the date of the note.
The most striking thing about this chart is the left 2/3 of the page, which is a 4 x 6 cluster of small pictures. Most of the pictures are graphs, each graph representing measurements of one thing (Na, K, Ca, Lithium, Mood, Psychosis, Temerature, Respirations, etc.). A few of the pictures are small representations of chest x-rays because in this case, the patient had pneumonia. The result is clear information about 24 different items plus clear notes all on a single sheet of paper.
The same information presented in tabular form would be much more difficult to read. Indeed, most of the numbers on a page full of tables wouldn't even be useful... a doc doesn't care what your precise glucose measurements over the last week have been; she wants mainly to know whether they've been high, normal, or low. Tufte's graphs are each labelled at the top with the most recent measurement, but the y-axis is labelled only with ++, +, (normal), -, --.
So the important difference between this chart and a list of tables is that the tables present a lot of data but hides some important information, while the graphical chart presents a lot of information, but hides a lot of unimportant data.
Scott McNealy's Take on Power Point (it is a PDF document)
There are really two issues: form and content, but they're related.
I think it's true that PowerPoint makes some forms (e.g., bulleted lists) easier than others (e.g., detailed blueprints), and that has an effect on the substance. You're more likely to come up with substance that fits easily into the form you imagine presenting in, and you're likely to imagine presenting in the form that's easiest to produce in your "presentation" software.
This is how the design of PowerPoint really does impact the actual substance of the message.
That being said, though, I think it's silly to put most of the blame on PowerPoint. I've made a lot of presentations to top execs in many industries in many countries over many years.
Since long before PowerPoint existed, I've noticed that top execs *demand* presentations in the form made easiest by PP. Their days are a non-stop parade of presentations designed to sell them on one idea after another. They want the minimum information necessary for them to be able to make what they (and NOT the presenters) consider a sufficiently well-informed decision to either take a next step or kill the project immediately. Once they feel they they have the info to make that decision, they'll stop your presentation in mid-slide, and you're done, so you'd better get your best ideas into the first two or three slides.
This is NOT the way scientists should make their presentations or decisions, and Tufte's work primarily focuses on presenting scientific information.
The blame then should not be on PP so much as on those who PP as the medium for all types of presentations. Unfortunately, the mechanics of putting information in front of a live audience are demanding, so the conveniences of PowerPoint make it seductive.
Of course, it's seductive to blame various bogeymen, such as MS, for all of the world's problems, too. That's another form of "dumbing down" an analysis.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."