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.

Comments

Impress

[m00nun1t]

...yet Open Office Impress copies all these flaws faithfully.

Re:Impress

[t0ny]

I heard that MS Word makes people stupid too, because if you want to write something, you have to type it yourself!

You also have to spell correctly if you cant use the spell checker, you need to make coherent sentences, and actually possess some sort of writing skill to make people understand what you are saying!

Oh, the humanity!

Re:Impress

[Geek of Tech]

Or here is another amazing idea.... Maybe slide presentations just aren't the best form for the information to be presented in. Truthfully, I don't see why most people use any form of slide presentation. Most of the time the data put on the slide isn't suited for that form of media. Most of the time it's too complex.

Of course this isn't Microsoft's fault. Nor Open-Office. This is the fault of people who decide to start using new technology (or new at the time) without really thinking if it helps or hinders the information being presented. And for years I was one of those people.

It's not software

[October_30th]

That's not a software problem.

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.

Re:It's not software

[nagora]

That's not a software problem.

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

Re:It's not software

[wfberg]

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.

Add to that;
5) only add major points on your slides, but don't forget to include a full text in the "notes" section, and make sure that if you distribute the presentation electronically it displays notes by default.
6) the presentation is not your report; distribute a separate, full-text, full-detail report. You can refer to this report for answering any intricate questions the audience might have.
7) if you're giving a presentation in a language that is not your, or the audiences, mothertongue (such as; jargonese), make sure that complicated or hard-to-pronounce words appear on the slides, and are referred to in the spoken part of the presentation in multiple ways (i.e. synonyms, explanations).
8) colors should work in black and white as well, for print-outs and crappy projectors.
9) the last slide WILL include your e-mail and web address.
10) the audience is NOT wearing any clothes.

that's all I can think of right now..

Re:It's not software

[Daggie]

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.

Re:It's not software

[DoraLives]

So what should we use to make presentations then?

Well...since everyone is well aware that ninety-eight percent of all meetings/presentations are either useless or downright counterproductive, perhaps we should ditch the lot of it. Such losses as would be incurred by the deletion of the two percent of productive meetings/presentations would be far more than offset by the gains of not having to countenance the rest of it.

I suppose if you MUST deal in pretty pictures and a bit of text, a printed handout that people could follow along with should do nicely. Hell, they might even be able to go back and refer to some of the material later on and even (gasp) take notes upon it!

This eventuality, of course, stands no chance of ever taking place in the world of wingtip shoes, horrid ties, and all the rest of the Form Over Function world of grown-up weenies and their damnable inclinations to impress with mere looks as opposed to actual substance. Sigh.

Re:It's not software

[gnu-generation-one]

"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.

Re:It's not software

[Daggie]

If you have no clue what you are saying, you have absolutely no business being up there giving the talk in the first place

True, but admit that often the manager gives the presentation instead off the person most suited for the job. Presentations often have a PR-function too.

As I also said, the most important factor is to know what you are talking about, the slides offer a means of help for yourself and for the audience. When you said "learning by heart" I tought you meant that you should just say what you learned : the exact same words etc... as 17 year old students mostly tend to do when they are feeling insecure.

When you understand the content, you will feel more secure and your audience will be more interested. That's my personal experience with giving presentations ..

Re:It's not software

[tommy_teardrop]

I go to regular scientific meetings that occur one a fortnight, that usually have 12 speakers, and roughly 50 people in the audience. Now, lets say each of these people really squeeze their talk down to about 5 slides, at least half those used in most presentations.

That's 3000 pages a meeting, or about 150,000 pages a year. For one group!

Powerpoint is a pain, transparancies don't work well in showing what you want, but printing everything out is a crazy waste of paper.

Re:It's not software

[GregWebb]

My apologies, misread part of your post.

Text can be good, though, because:

1) Your audience don't have to remember everything that you say. If you're getting complex points across, leaving something on screen that gives people the headline to what you're actually saying helps them remember it.
2) Some points can't be usefully conveyed graphically. By putting headlines on the screen while you explain the points in detail, you give the audience something relevant to watch rather than leaving up the last picture and distracting them.
3) Not everyone needs the detail. If you write the text and speak the detail, those who need it can get it while those who don't can still have a rough idea what you're saying, which is all they need.

Your Ph.D students clearly aren't doing this right - but there are many points where text is absolutely the way to go. And while I agree you shouldn't normally use a data table as part of a presentation, if there's that volume of data to get through would you _really_ advocate reading it instead? Far better to stick a table on screen and let the delegates see the overview properly themselves.

Re:It's not software

[ergo98]

2) avoid text on your slides at all costs

Any graphics that require interpretation will basically lose the audience, as the vast majority of people will tune you out and interpret it themselves. I've seen this in action at quite a few presentations.

Your points seem to propose a technique of "presenting to people who don't really care", and my experience is that such people don't really care regardless of how "jazzed up" your presentation is. If people care they're really there to listen and absorb a lecture of sorts, and the presentation is just something to point your eyes at rather than staring at the presenter, or as a medium to present data that's best formed as graphics, which is a subset.

Having said all of that, I have two pieces of advice for powerpoint presentations-

1) Never provide a hand-out of the presentation -- this is a way for people to escape your presentation and they'll just skim ahead, making presumptions about everything you're going to say, and then ignore the rest.

2) This is totally contrary to the whole subject of this article, but I truly believe that a presentation is a multimedia display, and in no way should the presentation have to hold up on its own -- i.e. If people weren't there, they shouldn't expect the same absorption or understanding skimming the presentation without the supporting presenter (unless you provide a full video recording of the presentation when you distribute it). Many people propose that presentations have to be fully self-supporting and that is just wrong.

Re:It's not software

[fruitbatUK]

1) Use a projector - stop using transparencies

Why? One advantage I've noticed with transparencies is that the presenter can look at the slide while still facing the audience. When using an LCD projector far too many presenters face the screen when talking. Of course the ideal setup (LCD projector for slides, 2nd screen for presenter showing notes view) would eliminate this problem, but I've never been lucky enough to use such a system. (Do they exist?)

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.

Actually I reckon that should be "know what you want to say". I use a crib sheet otherwise I'd forget the important points, but I do agree that just reading the slide makes a boring presentation.

Re:It's not software

[Waffle Iron]

So what should we use to make presentations then?

In the dark days before laser printers, we usually used a pencil. Draw your picture, xerox it onto a transparancy, and you're all set. (In the darker days befor cheap xerox machines, my school teachers used to do the same thing with special transparancies that worked in those purple mimeograph machines.)

As for text, that was often jotted on a blank transparancy or a chalkboard in the form of notes during the presentation itself.

It may be hard to believe, but that system worked just fine. The only reason you need powerpoint today is that everyone else uses it, and you wouldn't look cool enough if you used hand-drawn diagrams.

Re:It's not software

[fermion]

While this advice is useful for some presentations, heeding such advice as a rule of thumb, particularly 2 and 3, probably just makes the presentation more lame. #4 of course is always important.

The nice thing about powerpoint is that it allows people who would ordinarily drone on without visuals or manipulative to have both. The bad thing is that these people believe that because they have visuals and manipulative they have a good presentation. They believe that because they have animated text, which will in general bring a distracted person back to the presentation, they have an engaging presentation.

These people miss the reason for powerpoint. To address a wider range of learning styles, not just to be cool. Too much animation will distract the learner that just wants to read the handout and listen to the speaker. Too much color will distract the visual learner that the images are supposed to draw in. The use of a overhead or projector is often irrelevant because the presentation is seldom strong enough for such a choice to make a significant difference.

That said, the article appears to be mostly about the fact that most presentation focus on low quality cognitive presentations, and make little effort to encourage analysis, synthesis and evaluation in the audience. It is unfair to blame powerpoint for this. Encouraging such thinking is the responsibility of the presenter. he or she must ask the proper questions, present discrepant events, or otherwise cause the audience members to leave the dumdum state of regurgitation.

If this does not happen it is either because the presenter does not know how, or is afraid to do so. The later is often the case. Forcing more complex questions may lead to those that the presenter can not answer, and some may capitalized on such a situation to assert personal dogma. Likewise, discrepant events may be interpreted not as an opportunity to explore, but as an indication of incompetence.

As an example of the importance of visual presentation styles, look at these first two links from google on blooms taxonomy. Some will prefer the first, and some will prefer the second.
http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/guides/bloom. html
http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloo m.html

Re:It's not software

[Chris Y Taylor]

"Well...since everyone is well aware that ninety-eight percent of all meetings/presentations are either useless or downright counterproductive, perhaps we should ditch the lot of it."

Staff meetings and status updates may be mostly useless, but the presentations at technical conferences are VERY productive "meetings" where PowerPoint is frequently used, and they aren't just put on for the benifit of the wingtip shoe crowd.

Re:It's not software

[Coryoth]

My preferred technique for making presentations is as follows: when writing up my report in LaTeX (I'm a math person, so LaTeX is the natural choice) I include an extra \summary{ summary of paragraph } at the start of every paragraph, long equation array, etc. It's very little work to do this while writing the full report. My standard document class simply ignores summary content. I have another document class, however, that ignores the paragraph content and simply renders the section headings etc. and summary content to prettily rendered pdf slides. It takes some work setting up the document classes so that both versions look as elegant in each form, but once that's done you run LaTeX once and get your full report, then run it again, and get your presentation. Very easy, and it keeps the content much better.

Jedidiah.

Re:It's not software

[jc42]

I tend to use HTML.... 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 ...

And, most important, the web pages can contain hyperlinks. Then those who want just the idiot level can look at the main pages, while those who want actual information can start clicking and get all the detailed pages that you have included to support your top-level pages.

And, of course, the presentation and any handouts should prominently display the URL, for the benefit of the non-idiots in the audience.

Re:It's not software

[adam872]

I don't think it's all Powerpoint's fault. If you don't have a clue how to present to people then even the best tool isn't going to help. A lot of people whom I see present need to take some kind of course or at least practice amongst peers before presenting in an important meeting. This is what I did to try and hone my skills as I found myself presenting more often. I still wouln't regard myself as an expert by any means, but at least I can be understood by the audience most of the time.

Some things that I have found to be effective over time have been whiteboard/flipcharts and handouts. On a whiteboard, I feel I'm much better equiped to handle the ad-hoc question, or explain a concept more fully. Too many presenters paint themselves into the slideware corner, by not having any other visual aids. The best lecturers I had at University used the whiteboard as much as the overheads/PPT slides. The other thing I do when giving a presentation, particularly if it's rather dense, is to provide a handout, either in the form of a white paper or a summary of the presentation with the speakers notes. In fact, most of my presentations are actually a summary of the technical paper I wrote in the first place. A PDF or printed copy is much easier for the audience to digest later, when they've forgotten everything I just talked about :) The other big factor is the presenter voice. If you just drone on and on, people are going to switch off in the first minute or two.

All of that said, I have major issues with PPT on a usability and document portability front. A lot of Tufte's ideas are valid in my view and at least some of them I hope to incorporate into my work...

Re:It's not software

[adam872]

Agreed. The best presenters are well versed in their subject area and are confident enough to not only put that across to the audience, but handle tricky questions while in mid presentation. I've always been impressed by folks who can stop what their saying, answer a difficult question, then pick up where they left off.

The best recent example I can think of was a guy from NetAPP who basically didn't have anything prepared and just stood up and talked for 45 minutes. That sounds boring on the face of it, but I came away knowing a lot more about their technology than before and actually enjoyed listening to him. He clearly knew what he was talking about and this came across in how passionate he was when speaking about it.

Re:It's not software

[nsda's_deviant]

i agree with you that software itself doesn't cause people to make bad presentations but i think a culture of bad presentations are the norm. people who don't realize that their presentation is overly complicated and difficult to understand. issues like that should deal with a presenter fully equipped to deal with those issues with a great oral presentation. I've never thought that the actual slide content would ever be as important as the oral because you can't condense your entire speech into slides.

powerpoint doesn't make you dumb, i think the problem lies with the people who frequentlly give dumb powerpoint presentations. i've never seen a real scientific look at how powerpoint slides should be used in any setting but I would imagine it would not to be a complete script and should be easy to follow.

Re:It's not software

[forgotmypassword]

Speaking as a person who attends conferences and has also had to help students with presentations.

Transparencies are fine. Infact they much easier to read than PP files because the resolution is soooo much higher. Of course you need to switch your style to "Slides" in LaTeX so that it will ...

1) Use a large font size
2) Use a sans serif like ariel font and NOT a serif font like times

Those rules should be held when using PP too, also

a) use the highest resolution that the projector allows
b) turn the font smoothing on
c) avoid using colored backgrounds as they make it hard to read

As for your number (2) I find that text is fine as long as it is limited to consise statements. Too many students put paragraphs of text on their slides and read them right off the screen.

The particular reason that I prefer transparencies to PP in my field of study is that equations look horrid in PP, graphs don't look good, and none of their fancy features are needed. I wouldn't go as far as recommending them to everyone though, as you did with PP. I think it really depends on your field of study.

Re:It's not software

[LauraScudder]

Perhaps you could post your document classes somewhere so that others can start doing this as well. I'm in physics and this system sounds pretty appealling.

Saddam Captured

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm watching the PowerPoint presentation now.

Powerpoint at fault, or users?

[mattjb0010]

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but powerpoint doesn't have a wizard that says "it looks like you're trying to insert text saying `life threatening situation' in size 44 text, would you like to Dilbertize this slide?".

just plain silly

[MadMirko]

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"?

We have seen so much bullshit in plain text / html / .rtf / .pdf (and this story goes right along), but would anyone state that "vi / tex / Acrobat makes you dumb"?

Please, no more...

Re:just plain silly

[SlashdotLemming]

Please, no more...

It's because this is Slashdot and PowerPoint is a Microsoft product. If Slashdot stopped posting super spun MS bash articles like this, their traffic would decrease. All part of knowing your customer.

Powerpoint Flaws

[graystar]

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.

Re:Powerpoint Flaws

[Amiga Lover]

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.

I think you've hit the hammer on the head there.

Think back to when everyone first got homepages. Geocities. iridescent backgrounds, rainbow colours, huge text and animated gifs galore.

Fortunately the anonymity of the internet allowed us to email these people and go "Fuck your page sucks shit! burned my eyes. GAAAAAH".

Can't do that to the boss about his PPT presentation though.

You only need to look at SCO

[jonbryce]

Their powerpoint slide giving evidence of illegal copying of code into linux is a perfect example of this.

NASA and /.

[ErrorBase]

Have a lot in common :
If in doubt Blame Microsoft !
(or SCO but that was no option in this case)

PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

[johnkp]

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*

Re:PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

[nagora]

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?

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

Re:PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

[EvilTwinSkippy]

So the question returns: How did someone who couldn't give a rat's ass about "techical details" get to be in charge of a project that is ALL "technical details?"

Whoever picked the managers, and supervised the managers, is as much to blame as the damn foam chunk.

It does not make you dumb.

[arcanumas]

PowerPoint or any proesentations of this form was never intended to substitute normal means of presenting data.

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?

Re:It does not make you dumb.

[Ludoo]

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.

Do blame the messenger

[Space cowboy]

... assuming the deliverer of the presentation is the author, anyway...

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...

• Take time to lay the foundations of your main point, build slowly and incrementally towards it.
  
• Deliver summaries on a regular basis so people can checkpoint their way through the technical ideas.
  
• Use graphics if they convey the message better than words, or if appropriate for humour. Understanding often arrives with a chuckle.
  
• Sound effects are (almost) always useless.
  
• Don't over-complicate, make it as detailed as it needs to be and no more.
  

This is hardly an exhaustive list, but I've found them useful guidelines...

Simon.

I think they got it backwards

[reboot246]

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!

Re:I think they got it backwards

[Amiga Lover]

> What scares me is that the schools are actually teaching and using PowerPoint!

Tell me about it. My nephew just finished his highschool finals. Among them was a course entitled "Computer programming and Software Design". Half the damned textbook was how to use MS Office.

Mmmm, favourite text editor - vi, emacs or Word?

Re:I think they got it backwards

[Alomex]

Which idiot moderated that comment up? Smart people are bored to tears by dumb people. The PP presentation is fully optional.

Re:I think they got it backwards

[SStrungis]

Yep,

I am one of those educators that does teach PowerPoint. I was forced. I used to teach a Multimedia course that was actually fun. We used Hyperstudio as a base, and I had the time to teach them a little Photoshop, Illustrator, and SoundEdit when they needed those tools to make things better.

Then middle management came along and decreed that Thou Shalt use PowerPoint as it is what the Real World uses. They also decreed that I would integrate presentation topics with the academic teacher's classes to inject a little "reality" into my eighth grader's lives.

Now I have to teach wretched PowerPoint and the presentations generally bore me to tears. Plus with MM looking at me all the time I cannot have any fun anymore with other software. There is no time. Lately I have jazzed it up a lot, and the students have gotten better through the use of note cards, but PP still sucks.

I am trying really hard to drive home the important points of presentations, but stupid things like Word f'n Art get in the way.

Scott

Re:I think they got it backwards

[bishiraver]

What scares me is that the schools are actually teaching and using PowerPoint!

I just got finished with a CIS110 class (it has bored me to tears; the lab instructor spent two weeks instructing us on how to copy files and create folders in windows). The only reason I'm taking this class is because it is a prerequisit for high performance computing (which involves clustering *nix boxes and such).

The last unit in the lab section of the course was power point. Our project was to compare the pros and cons of different websites on the same subject, create a power point presentation, and present it to the class. I was appalled at not only how many people had absolutely ugly and overly complicated slides, but also how many people missed the entire point of the presentation - half the class simply did a little this-is-a-little-about-my-subject presentation, citing a few websites on the last slide. Not only that, but several people stood up there, facing the projector's screen, reading word for word the slides they had written.

It is not my conclusion that powerpoint makes people dumb; it is my conclusion that people are dumb, and giving them powerpoint is like giving a blind man paintbrushes or a digital camera.

Re:I think they got it backwards

[Radon Knight]

However, I find that if you have any real sort of equations, it's going to get kinda scary when you move it from one computer to another.

This is why Apple's Keynote software rocks. You can import PDF graphics (and it keeps them as vector graphics, rather than PP), which means you can use LaTeX to prepare the equations, export them as PDF, and drop them directly on the slide. For example, see the LaTeX Equation Editor

Re:So let's see...

[__past__]

do we also believe guns kill people, not the people pulling the triggers?

Right. It's not that PowerPoint makes people dumb, but you could certainly argue that dumb people make PowerPoint...

The dumbness spreads.

[questamor]

I worked in a print shop a few years ago, and people would bring in large .ppt documents to print

not as slides, mind, but they'd laid out BOOKS in powerpoint. Yes, blue shaded background in landscape mode and all, with large yellow text, they'd write a small booklet in powerpoint and come to us to have it printed in a professional looking booklet.

Of course they didn't want it to look like it did onscreen, they wanted it to look like any other novels.

Upper management were the worst, when they worked on something themselves, and would bring in a .ppt slide to be printed as a poster.

An embedded 72dpi powerpoint image does NOT scale up well at all to an A1 poster.

All other app users, from Quark XPress, pagemaker, acrobat, word, whatever... they knew what to expect and how to (generally) lay out a document, and when we'd have to do adjustments, they'd be relatively minor, but powerpoint people were bottom of the barrel.

Except for the guy who laid out all his print jobs in Frontpage. I think he was on acid.

Re:The dumbness spreads.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

My favorite are the ones who have picked out a blue on blue color scheme that looks great on a CRT.

Of course when they throw it up on an LCD projector it's completly illegible. Then it becomes my problem to figure out why the display isn't working.

(Goes back to cleaning gun collection.)

Dangerous grounds...

[DeepDarkSky]

It is not the tool that makes people dumb, it is the people using the tool.

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-an d-misinform strategies that started the whole problem?

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?

Did anyone get it?

[daraknor]

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.

Re:Did anyone get it?

[dunstan]

My 11 year old son came home from school with an assignment to put together a short presentation on the subject of refugees. I sat down with him and started discussing the points he wanted to make ... about how to tell genuine refugees from economic migrants, the flow of refugees over the years, about how groups of refugees over the years have helped shape our society, and we started taking notes into an emacs buffer to marshall ideas

He ran off to his mother saying "I'm meant to be making a powerpoint presentation, and Dad won't help me", whereupon his mother came and took over - as I stormed out of the room I heard the words "now what font would you like it to be in" ...

Me, I can't present to an audience without interacting, and I can't interact with Powerpoint/Magicpoint, so while there may be some prepared content on acetate/PP, a board with pens is a must.

Powerpoint/Magicpoint may well be OK for persuasive presentations - e.g. sales pitches - but is a hopeless means of presenting analysis and explanation. If people need to read an article by information theorist Edward Tufte to work this out, we're in trouble.

Duntan

Why "PowerPoint makes you dumb"?

[mongbot]

This criticism applies to any slide show, performed with software or without. Just because MIcrosoft have produced a popular and highly selling slideshow program is no reason to single them out.

Regular users and graphics

[nemaispuke]

I did PowerPoint and Persuasion presentations for Joint Intelligence for four years, if what I saw on a daily basis there is any indication of the "skill" of the regular user, a lot of people need help!

The average user does not know how to make effective graphics, and even when they are assisted by someone who does, they tend to ignore their advice. some of the bigger mistakes I saw were:

A briefer handed me message traffic and said "make slides of these". I told him he had to summarize the traffic inot four or five small bullets. He looked at me as if I was nuts! This unfortunately became the norm, lots of text regardless of whether or not you could read it.

Every slide had to have a command seal in it, as if the viewer couldn't figure out where the presentation came from?

And of course the non graphics "professional" who would use such things as silly effects and screen dumps to create a presentation. I once had to come in on a Saturday to assist in a download of a 69 MB PowerPoint presentation that consisted entirely of screen dumps! And this was over a poor ISDN line so it took over three hours!

Until people are made to realize that they have no "skillz" in graphics, this kind of nonsense will continue. It makes me glad that I don't have to sit through those briefs anymore!

Wha?

[Kjella]

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.

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 ;). And if you know consulting firms, when they felt we managed to do a very good presentation, I think we did something right...

Kjella

No I don't know what's goin on...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Slideware bad compared to what ?

[rcastro0]

Tufte's thesis is expressed as:

Alas, slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.

One thing I am trying to understand is... slideware reduces the analytical quality of presentations as compared to what ? Let me see some alternatives:

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."

Re:Slideware bad compared to what ?

[amcguinn]

You're asking the right question.

And you've got the right answer. It's 2. Some things are too complicated to push into a couple of dozen slides. Some things do have to be actually studied before you can make good decisions. You might want to give a half-hour talk to a group to tell them what they have to study and what they have to decide, and Powerpoint or equivalent is a great help to that, but you can't say that keeping the space shuttle in the sky isn't rocket science. You give them maybe twenty pages of analysis, including charts or whatever, that is going to take a few hours to study and understand, and if you need to talk to them you make a brief presentation that talks about the report.

It's not true

[Lonath]

Powerpoint

• Tool
• Use Correctly
• Knowledge
• Audience

Part of Whole

• Text
• Graphics
• Verbal
• Handouts
• Followup

Proper Use

• Overview
• Review
• Preview
• !In-Depth

Wrapup

• Tool
• Component
• Condensed
• Followup

I think I've made myself clear.

Re:It's not true

[cooldev]

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.)

Tufte's money machine

[Peter Van Roy]

Tufte has come a long way from being a pure scientist: you have to pay $7 to get his 28 page essay on PowerPoint. Isn't scientific information usually published in journals or conference proceedings, for a nominal fee? Aren't papers usually put on the Web for free?

Usually, science advances best when information can be exchanged freely. Tufte seems to have forgotten this.

Gettysburg Address in Powerpoint

[Uggy]

What if Abe had use Powerpoint to "present" the Gettysburg Address?

Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report

[An Anonymous Hero]

Tufte's analysis quoted by the NYT is in Chapter 7 of the CAIB report.

For a concise summary see also here ;-)

Asian approaches to Presentations

[davejenkins]

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).

We call it...

[JetScootr]

"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....

Managers make you dumb

[hey!]

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.

Re:Managers make you dumb

[hey!]

You don't know the half of it. She was the biggest fricken' corporate schemer and backstabber I've ever had to work with.

The way she actually put it was "we're going to take away their Macs and make them use PCs". Nobody knew about this scheme in advance, I was going to annonce this for the first time at the Christmas party. Nice Xmas present for that Mac fanatic on your list, eh?

Of course, as a good corporate soldier, I was expected to present this as my idea and pretend I thought it was completely brilliant. She certainly wasn't going to stand up and take the heat for an unpopular decision.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that cowardice, or at least insecurity, is a big part of the mania for PowerPoint and its competitors.

The final straw. Slashdotters are retarded.

[Craevenwulfe]

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.

Amused at adware ....

[JetScootr]

At the bottom of the article trashing powerpoint (at least when I'm reading it) is an ad for:
"Microsoft 2003 Powerpoint. New Powerpoint 2003 Helps you create and present presentations. www Office Microsoft com"

It depends

[ElGanzoLoco]

... 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 ;-) )

Re:It depends

[Alomex]

But one of my teachers used only Powerpoint slides, all year long; he couldn't make himself clearer, and those presentations were excellent.

Over my lifetime I've seen academic presentations move from the blackboard to slides to powerpoint/keynote. The average presentation in the field (a) has no bell and whistles (default background, no special transition effects) and (b) is much more comprehensible than the average blackboard/slide presentation of a few years back.

Powerpoint forces the speaker to deconstruct the message to its basic elements, and present them to the audience as a scaffolding upon which the speaker builds the entire presentation. A very good speaker doesn't need this scaffolding, but lets face it, most of us are average speakers.

What really pisses me off....

[Qbertino]

...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?

Re:What really pisses me off....

[JetScootr]

This confusion between the type of product and the brand of the product is exactly what Microsoft wants. That's why their flagship products have names like "Windows" for a windowing GUI and "Access" for a database access tool and "Word" for a word processor and "Flight Simulator" for a flight simulator... . If they wanted their brands of the products to stand alone, they'd use non-descriptive words, or make up their own, like "Ford" for cars, "Apple" for computers, "Jimmy Dean" for sausage, etc.
The reason Powerpoint is taking the heat for dumbing down presentations is because Microsoft is a monopoly. If presentations were produced by 4-20 products that approximately shared the market space, the article would have used the term "Presentation or Slideshow software" instead of "Powerpoint".
One aspect of this that you didn't mention, though, is that because Powerpoint has so little in the way of competitive products, new ways and ideas for presenting data are not being turned into products to compete. This results in the cookie-cutter presentation design - all presentations look alike and have a common weakness because they're all built using the same tool.
It's like houses: They're nearly all built with vertical rectangular walls. This isn't the best way to enclose a living space - it uses more material, it's not as stable in high winds, it is less pleasing to the eye than other shapes. But most building codes are written around this idea, and superior designs like geodesics, curved walls, etc, are actually illegal in many many places in USA.
Sorry, didn't really mean to rant here. You are mostly correct, but consider that /. crowd is basically a slice of the "power user" part of the industry, and is not really that exclusive a crowd.

Re:What really pisses me off....

[JetScootr]

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.

Concerning "I hate curved walls ..." 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.

It's all about choice, and the lack of it.

Re:n-e-w-s ?

[calyphus]

You don't know Tufte.

Don't go too far down the 'text is all you need route.' Nothing but text is a great way to hide information. Presenting data in graphs is an aid to understanding, but those graphics need to be well-designed, information rich, non-manipulative and visually enlightening. For example, compare a table of numbers showing GDP for 100 years to a line graph with the numbers in a table beneath - the numbers specify, but the line illuminates the pattern.

Graphs aren't the problem, bad information design is. Powerpoint doesn't help with design. It does help add clutter, however.

Re:n-e-w-s ?

[Pflipp]

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.

I don't understand this article at all.

[Pathetic Coward]

It's just text. Where are the PowerPoint slides?

Chicken, or Egg?

[LazloToth]

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.

Yeah, I have his pamphlet on my desk...

[Photo_Nut]

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.

My Presentation

[t_allardyce]

• The problem is that people either use terrible templates
  
• Or they try and design it themselves thinking they are good designers
  
• Then there are bullet points that have no purpose
  
• and really annoying effects
  

• People dont use enough graphics to explain things
  
• just clip-art of people shaking hands
  
• A good model broken up into layers/parts can explain allot more than text
  

• dont even get me started on 3D text!!!
  
• OpenOffice Impress can do much better frame based/morphing animation - ie you can show a graph changing shape in response to a decision
  
• The End
  

The right tool for the right job, in this case...

[Presence1]

... stupid presentations.

from the article
"Perhaps PowerPoint is uniquely suited to our modern age of obfuscation -- where manipulating facts is as important as presenting them clearly. If you have nothing to say, maybe you need just the right tool to help you not say it."

"If people were told they were going to have to sit through an incredibly dense presentation, [...] they wouldn't want it."

While the point has been made that 'it isn't the tool it is the user, the issue here is not that it is POSSIBLE to create a rich, clear, and concise presentation with PowerPoint, but that it encourages exactly the opposite behavior, i.e., gutted data sets, obfuscation, and inaproppriate brevity.

Is this Microsoft's fault? While, IMHO, they have perpetrated many outrages, this is not one of them. They simply sold what the customers wanted.

The much scarier prospect is that schools are starting to teach PowerPoint as a basic skill/tool.

Don't Replace Bad Solution With No Solution

[Alphanos]

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.

You describing the problem, not the solution

[Per Abrahamsen]

Your three rules are the problem, they result in presentations that are visually stimulating, but does not carry any information that sticks.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

Bad Presenters Use Powerpoint

[calyphus]

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).

Read this slide? How about the whole report?

[ibeleo]

Considering the magnitude of the report ("Hey Bob, here is a report if the Shuttle will explode") I think people would have read the whole report. On page 5,right before the slides Dr.Tufte critiqued, was titled

Damage Results From "Crater " Equations Show Significant Tile Damage

which I imagine should have had the following affect on the two types of audience memebers - 'senior'engineer and 'senior'managers.

Senior Engineer - Screw the presentation give me the data the Shuttle is in trouble

Senior Managers - Big Hole can't be good

I won't disagree with Dr Tufte's conclusion on those particluar slide he outlined - yes they were packed full of words and should have been spread out. But I doubt it was PowerPoint. Especially not from the final summary bulletpoint on the last page of the report {page 13 I'll note} gave the engineer's conclusion

Conclusion
Contingent on multiple tile loss thermal analysis showing no violation of M/OD criteria,safe return indicated even with significant tile damage

Re:English speakers

[elmegil]

'cos you know, I'm going to go cross reference all the words in my presentation to make sure that I know the etymology of every one. Maybe if I was an english major I'd inherently know which ones were Anglo-Saxon, but right this moment the only one I can think of is not contextually appropriate unless you've made me angry, which you haven't.

Readability Analysis Tools for Slides

[G4from128k]

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.

they're called "talks" and "speakers" for a reason

[penguin7of9]

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.

Stop using transparencies?

[bkrrrrr]

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

Not exactly

[twitter]

yet Open Office Impress copies all these flaws faithfully.

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.

Re:Not exactly

[VividU]

It's Microsoft's rule set for generating the slides that's at fault, not the means of communication itself.

Easily takes the cake as one the most nonsensical posts I've read in Slashdot. The "ruleset" makes you dumb? HUH?

But then I saw your sig and it all made sense.

Re:Not exactly

[drinkypoo]

You can say that Powerpoint is a suboptimal piece of equipment for doing this but since it allows you to import images your argument is complete nonsense. There is nothing stopping you from composing your slides in the software package of your choice, exporting to some sort of bitmap format (perhaps though postscript as an interim step, then converting to a bitmap with ghostscript) except laziness. It would still be less work than drawing the slides by hand. However people choose to use the internally-provided tools for slide generation.

Both you and Tufte are Anti-Microsoft FUD spreaders. There are plenty of reasons to be Anti-MS, but this ain't one of them.

For example, the low resolution of a PowerPoint slide means that it usually contains only about 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading. PowerPoint also encourages users to rely on bulleted lists, a ''faux analytical'' technique, Tufte wrote, that dodges the speaker's responsibility to tie his information together. And perhaps worst of all is how PowerPoint renders charts. Charts in newspapers like The Wall Street Journal contain up to 120 elements on average, allowing readers to compare large groupings of data. But, as Tufte found, PowerPoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements. Ultimately, Tufte concluded, PowerPoint is infused with ''an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.''

I mean, look at the text. "PowerPoint also encourages users", "PowerPoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements", "an attitude of commercialism". All of these sentences make it clear to me that the problem lies with the users, not the software. The software's design might be flawed but it is in no way responsible for the problem, and for reasons which reach more broadly than the EULA. A pusher encourages people to take drugs, but it's someone's own choice to take them or not. Powerpoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements, but is that Microsoft's fault? It's not like you can't generate charts outside powerpoint. And finally, an attitude of commercialism? I have my own attitude, which I enforce over the will of the software, not the other way around. If it doesn't ordinarily do things the way I want to do things, I will find a way around it.

Perhaps the only valid complaint about powerpoint is the low resolution. I have indeed never seen a high resolution powerpoint slide, so I am willing to believe it doesn't support high resolutions. The solution? DON'T USE IT. If your company forces you to use powerpoint, that is simply not Microsoft's fault; it's the fault of your employer. Otherwise, make up some slides which match the resolution of your output device (which incidentally, even in this day and age, is typically only 800x600 and is almost never better than 1024x768) and run a slideshow. Change slides with the mouse wheel.

The real problem is the people unwilling to think outside the [Powerpoint] box. Yes, I hate the base expression too, but it worked well here, so I decided to use it. Similarly, if Powerpoint doesn't work well, I will choose not to use it. Powerpoint is not a substitute for actually LEARNING how to assemble a presentation, something upon which many books have been written, and about which many classes have been taught. People believe that it is, and they let its little wizards walk them through making a presentation and they think it's going to turn out to be a work of art. Powerpoint's wizards exist to let complete idiots turn out a reasonably workable presentation. That's all they do. Believing they do something else is downright superstitious.

Re:Not exactly

[FCAdcock]

Now I'm just as much of an anti-Microsoft zelot as the next guy, but to quote one of my local LUG members here: "YOU'RE WRONG!" It's not microsoft, it's the slides themselves. I look at slides all the time that are talking about things that I actually know and wonder "what the heck is this talking about?" People just don't learn by using slides. It's a dumb idea. always has been. Why do you think the pentagon banned powerpoint. It's a waste of time.

Re:Not exactly

[rnd()]

Uh, your comment about pasting images and the alleged reduced quality after an image has been in PowerPoint is utterly untrue. As of PowerPoint 2000, all images are stored in their original state, and any crops or resizing operations do not modify the original or degrade it in any way.

On a side note, if you read Tufte's book then you wouldn't let a software tool get in the way of your ability to communicate information.

On a second side note, your comment was really a troll.

Re:Not exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, Adobe was found to be guilty of making designers dumb, cause many designers using Photoshop found to be creating ugly graphics. In addition to the last month's conviction of creating Dreamweaver which causes people to create pure ugly web sites, this news didn't suprise many. One slashdotter, with the nick name twitter, said the problem with photoshop is that Adobe's rule set is wrong. Another slashdotter admitted that it is a people problem, but quickly pointed out "Adobe should have designed its software so that the users can not create ugly graphics files".

I think, not only the software from Microsoft, but also the news about its software make people dumber. Look at the page and read the insightful and interesting posts. You don't have to touch its software to be dumb.

Re:Not exactly

[eean]

I think your missing the point. It's "slideware" (did the NY Times coin that just now? I've always just used the word PowerPoint even in reference to Impress, its like Kleenex) in general that is of fault. Theres only so much you can put on the screen. Theres only so much you would want to put on the screen. That can't be changed with a better designed slideware.

Re:Not exactly

[JohnQPublic]

But the whole idea behind a presentation is to TALK! Use words to describe the topic. And if you need a graph that is to detail to show up clearly on the projector, then print it out and hand it out.

Thank you. That is dead right.

Nope, that's dead wrong. Tufte is an academic researcher and author. As such he comes from a school of thought that values formal papers and verbatim recitations of them, with active Q&A. In other words, pre-planned well-written presentations - the antithesis of PowerPoint. If you believe in that perspective, then bullet-point agenda-style visuals with off-the-cuff or even pre-planned spoken commentary are "bad".

PostScript and maybe a PDF viewer is all ya need..

[bkrrrrr]

Who needs "Presentation Software"? If you know how to program in PostScript you can do all of this in a much more simple and portable way... bkr

Re:n-e-w-s ?

[YouHaveSnail]

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.

Great Troll.

[twitter]

To defend Power Point, you pretend to be an expert and then exhort us to:

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.

Stupididty

[danoaks15]

I am still in high school and I have seen some of the worst use of powerpoint possible. Many people just ype a report onto PowerPoint and then read it. Pretty much everbody uses unreadable fonts. I'ts unbelievable.

It's only the first step...

[IDigUNIX]

...in the de-evolution of intelligent life in the corporate world.

1. Make someone use PowerPoint. Well suited candidates can progress rapidly to step 2.
2. As technical skills diminish, the use of MS Access becomes a "logical" choice.
3. At this point, the candidate will be unable to process information without the use of Excel spreadsheets and charts. Adequate time must be allowed at this stage for memories of past "clues" and competance to fade.

   When the candidate begins publishing Word documents on internal websites they're ready for the final step.

4. For subjects who are marginally competent at using MS Office, Managerial positions are the logical choice. Schedule the subject's lobotomy and prepare an office for them.

   ...or...

5. For subjects who are incapable of using the full MS Office Suite, but excell in verbal communications and have a nice unctuous personal image...schedule the "soul-ectomy", give them a fancy Palm Pilot, and introduce them to their new coworkers in the Sales department.

Academic Uses of PowerPoint

[abbamouse]

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

Re:Academic Uses of PowerPoint

[hankwang]

>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.

I've never understood what the idea is of point sizes on something that is going to be projected on a 3 meter-wide screen. Is it going to be 14 points if you print it landscape on standard A4/letter paper, or if it will be portrait (covering half the paper)?

I have found that from the last row in a typical lecture hall, the projected image is typically as big as a QUARTER A4 (=A6) or Letter sheet at normal reading distance (30 cm/1 ft). So if you want to judge the legibility, then print it on reduced size, or turn down the contrast of your 17 inch monitor and look at it from 60 cm (2 ft) at a 30 degree angle.

Power Point facilitates stupidity

[adenium_obesum]

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.

Convey the Crux

[jacobjyu]

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?

Bullshit

[Bored Huge Krill]

PowerPoint doesn't make you dumber.

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

Re:English speakers

[Haeleth]

English speakers should stick to short Anglo-Saxon words. You can't always avoid Latin and French words, but try to use the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary where you can.

That's very good advice.

Er... sorry, I shouldn't have used "advice" (via French from Latin "ad visere")... let's rephrase that to "your words are wise." Whoops, I said "rephrase" (re + phrase, via Latin from Greek "phrasis"), that should be "let's use a different word". Oh, but "different" is from Latin "differre". An alternative... nope, Latin again... aha, I think "another" is okay. "Let's use another word".

Damn, this is difficul-- um, hard, isn't it? Blast, I forgot, "damn" is from Latin too!

By the way, I would like to draw attentio-- sorry, to point out that your use of the word "vocabulary" is not a good choice. The Anglo-Saxon term is "word-hoard", which I think you'll agree[1] is much clearer[2].

[1] Agree: from Old French "agreer"
[2] Clear: from Latin "clarus" via Old French "cler".

I can imagine

[ShadowRage]

The NASA powerpoint presentations having midi music playing while being presented, with little sound effects playing as they activate text or something like that..

this is where the shuttle lost control and blew up in re-entry, *WAAA WAAAAA*

"excuse me, what was that?"

"oh, we added in that little effect, neat, huh?"

"and why is there really bad stairway to heaven music on?"

"ooh, we added that in for the drama!"

"..."

The problem is information dissemination...

[jinx90277]

...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.

The solution: "The Bill Joy Font"

[neilmjoh]

Scott McNealy's Take on Power Point (it is a PDF document)

McNealy famously decalred to the San Jose Mercury, 3 August 1997, "We had 12.9 Gigbytes of PowerPoint slides on our network. And I thought 'What a huge waste of corporate productivity'. So we banned it". ...

McNealy's much cheaper, and more productive solution, was to remove PowerPoint and to "give everybody plastic Mylar sheets and all the pens they need to scribble on them", and to use what he describes as "the Bill Joy font. You can see where he licked his thumb and erases. It's so much faster," and leaves you time to get on with the job.

The most important presentation rule: Tell a story

[Jerf]

The most important presentation rule of all is that you must tell a story.

Your story does not have to be like a novel or anything, but you do want to co-opt the standard story order: Problem, elaboration, solution, resolution (effects of solution). This time-tested structure drives your presentation forward and makes people more likely to want to listen.

The two other presentation orders I see result in flawed presentations, regardless of the other qualities of the presentation. "Random facts in random order", by far the most common, results in an incoherent presentation that leaves the listener to try to pick out the most important facts themselves; perhaps valid in some ways but for the most part that indicates failure on your part.

"Solution first" may seem more appealing then my formulation, but popping the climax right off the bat leaves the rest of the presentation an anti-climax. It's important to explain the problem, so as to motivate the listener to listen.

By the time you get to the solution, significant chunks of your audience should want to hear the solution.

Of course, this only really applies to presentations more then ten minutes or so; shorter then that and it doesn't much matter. That's also why this message is "solution first"... of course, it's also not a presentation, it's online writing, so newspaper rules are in effect, but it's also because you shouldn't need ten minutes to read this post.

Powerpoint at schools

[Polyhazard]

I'm a student at Colorado State University, and one thing I have noticed is that so many of the Freshman level courses use Powerpoint for notes that once people get into upper-division classes they have no idea how to take notes for themselves.

Most of the time, people spend thier entire class period copying down everything on the screen, and don't pay any attention to what the instructor is saying. They have a bunch of disconnected facts to read later, but no context.

In classes where the instructor chooses not to use Powerpoints, fellow students are constantly complaining that they don't know what to write. Their ability to learn by listening is shot.

I disagree, but still hate Powerpoint.

[supabeast!]

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.

Wrong direction

[MrWa]

Powerpoint, as a presentation software, is not horrible. The problem - which Tufte points out - is that people use the templates to help them put what little information they have into a presentation. Even worse, they may try to fit the good information they have into the minimal amount of space that the slides allow.

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.

good point

[GCP]

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.

At the risk of being modded down...

[Bugmaster]

...I beg to differ. It seems that the main problem NASA had was that

When NASA engineers assessed possible wing damage during the mission, they presented the findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide -- so crammed with nested bullet points and irregular short forms that it was nearly impossible to untangle.

If you don't know how to create a clear, meaningful visual aid, then no amount of software will help you. I have seen people who drew their slides by hand, with ink and paper, and they had so many bullet points and arrows that the paper was literally falling apart in places. I got a headache just by looking at it through my peripheral vision.

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.

But you can't just blame the person using the gun

[ngrier]

While your post is dead on, you are failing to miss the point of many who cry foul of powerpoint: too many people who use it don't know better. For the same reason the folks in the trenches like to snipe at management as "pointy-haired" it's really easy for those who know how to make a good presentation to say "oh, they're just incompetent; it's not the fault of Powerpoint".

While I agree that there is some validity to the argument blaming the person and not the gun, to draw the line there is also short-sighted. Too many people either haven't ever been tought how to make a good presentation or just don't care and are happy to use Powerpoint to effortlessly produce crap.

Either way, Powerpoint clearly enables such poor presentations by making people focus on only one way to present information (a large-fonted bulleted list) and gives way too many options for transitions that only distract from the substance.

(Of course this doesn't remove the blame from corporate execs/govt officials who are not willing to listen to more than 30s of a presentation, nor those who willingly oblige them. And of course a higher education system which actively promotes the blind use of Powerpoint rather than spending time making people learn how to make a good presentation is also to blame! [Hint: the slides are purely a visual aid; they are not supposed to be your presentation, merely assist you in getting your point across -- nor are they a substitute for a good technical memo!]) </rant>