I’m that guy in the front row who gasps when there are more than 10 words on a slide. I’m that guy in the front row who twitches when I see itty-bitty images — a dozen of them — thrown on a screen with every single effect known to man. I shouldn’t get motion sickness when I see a presentation. But it happens … a lot. So when Dave Gray postulated why, I was on it.It’s been on my mind ever since Apple introduced Keynote and I saw my first, beautiful electronic presentation, likely by Stefan Bucher a few years ago. Presentations can and should be works of art. It’s the perfect blend of display, audio, visual and presenter working in total harmony. As Dave Gray suggests in his article of last week, we are inundated with much information and, therefore, many PowerPoint presentations. Here’s an excerpt:
But PowerPoint is not the enemy. When used appropriately, slides, and short sequences of slides, are excellent tools to represent knowledge. A good slide contains visual and verbal information in equal measure, and as an “information container,” a slide is just about the perfect size for memory and retention: big enough to hold meaningful information, but not so big that it’s likely to become overwhelming. A well-designed slide – one that’s comfortable to view and read – holds just about the same amount of information that you can hold in your short-term memory.
I’ve always been a fan of Check out this article and see if there’s anything you can do to make that next PowerPoint presentation successful and memorable.
I saw this article, too. And I really appreciate your comments, Don. But in my opinion, here’s where the real “marriage” needs to occur.
In today’s “hurry up and get it done” culture, the industry has succumbed to putting far too much into PowerPoint presentations because they DON’T just get used as a “pure presentation”.
Instead, agencies and clients alike use them as BOTH the presentation and the detailed report that both partiies will need/want to tap in the future when they need more detail and specificity and maybe the same players aren’t still around. As P&G used to teach, put the detail in writing in case every one on the agency and client team gets killed by a bus overnight.
So, the detail and specificity must live somewhere. In a perfect world, there would be that pretty and pithy PowerPoint deck presentation that functions as the spare talking points for the speaker. And then there would be the client leave-behind deck, chock full of detail and specificity.
But this effort requires planning, discipline and time– especially time for the speaker to rehearse so that he/she can use the presentation merely as a visual cue card vs. a script.
I think it’s doable–this approach of the brief but exciting presentation deck and the more detailed, leave behind. But it requires behavior change for both agencies and clients–especially agencies. Can we plan ahead enough? Will that inevitable urge to “improve” the presentation deck last minute allow for this? Curious as to what you and other SB folks think.
Kids are taught how to use PowerPoint in school these days–but the experience is, as Gray says, “Death by PowerPoint.” The misuse of this tool starts in elementary school, where 5th graders are encouraged to cram tons of info into each slide and then to read off the slides in “presenting.” I know of several times when kids who didn’t read their slides verbatim were admonished by their teachers. Wouldn’t it be so much more fun if assignments could be to (1) tell a whole story or report in 100 spoken words or less; (2) tell it entirely in pictures; (3) write it as if they had to pay a nickel for every word used and they only had two bucks in their pockets; and (4) write it with 6-8 pages of just a word or a handful of words (here’s where you’re getting closer to your ppt bullets) with a picture? My problem is that PowerPoint becomes the standard of adult communication for kids–and it is usually so ugly and awkward and forgettable. How sad for kids to learn how to render their good stories and cool ideas powerless.
I agree with everything Gayle and Kelley said. What we really need (Apple or Microsoft) is a a new program that fulfills the “leave behind” need so that we can use PowerPoint or Keynote for what it was truly designed for–aiding presentations. There’s a pot of gold at the end of this software development rainbow.
Following up on the comments above: We already have what you are looking for, as far as brevity vs detail: You can use the “notes” function in PowerPoint to fill in the “detail” of the information and leave the presented screen simplified. Then, if you are going to leave somthing behind, leave behind a “notes view” print out of the deck.