PowerPoint Presentations

The prevalence of PowerPoint has been incorporated in business culture so long as there have been computers widely available. Microsoft created a presentation institution in the 1990s, a simple and effective information tool useful for students, teachers, companies and modern businesses. Yet, as the century has turned and PowerPoint has aged, the outcry against PowerPoint has grown more vicious and direct. The once applauded pillars of PowerPoint (information, bullet points, accessibility) are now seen as archaic plagues against the modern presentation world. Edward Tufte, Professor Emeritus of Yale University states in a 2003 issue of Wired: “At a minimum, a presentation format should do no harm. Yet the PowerPoint style routinely disrupts, dominates, and trivializes content. Thus PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play -very loud, very slow, and very simple.”

Yet, in the same issue of Wired, graphic designer David Byrne, states

“…On top of that, PowerPoint makes hilariously bad-looking visuals. But that’s a small price to pay for ease and utility. We live in a world where convenience beats quality every time. It was, for my purposes, perfect.”

In 2003, the interest in PowerPoint continued unabated, yet the criticism grew more refined. Gone were the times of blocked information being passed off as acceptable presentations. Instead, the Tuftes of the world demanded a more refined, engaging, and nuanced approach.

In the year 2012, PowerPoint continues its use in all informative presentations. PowerPoint presentations continue to glaze the eyes of Americans nationwide, in boardrooms and in offices. The reputation of PowerPoint as a prosaic endeavor in overwrought monotony wasn’t always ubiquitous, and only developed due to the public’s indefatigable usage of the program. Good PowerPoint presentations can exist, but it has proven, more often than not, to be a perilous undertaking.

The Good, The Bad and The PowerPoint

MS PowerPoint, for those unfamiliar with the program, is a presentation tool that presents or projects a series of slides meant to accompany a written script. These slides have flexibility in style and content, the designer can choose the layout, content, text, font, colors and style of each slide. They can include any images they want, including graphical analysis of data or stock images. The problem that we are focusing on arises from this multiplicity of options. Most of the time, people who create PowerPoint slides overwhelm their slides with text or images, crowding the slide and creating trouble for the audience as they try to sift through the onscreen data. They give little regard for the text on-screen and will often read directly from the slide. This is the amateur use of PowerPoint, which is unfortunately, also the most common.

People need to make use of an economy of text and images. Do not crowd your slides; keep all text and images to a minimum and use them as a prompt for your speech. Do not read directly from the slide, instead put one or two keywords that you want to focus on and expand upon. If you put all of your text on your slides, your readers will not take the presentation seriously once they have read the slides. Your slides should be a vehicle for proper delivery of a speech, not a vehicle for the speech itself. Remember, you are trying to convince someone or present an opinion; your slides should be simple, presentable and you yourself need to be convincing. The following section highlights more techniques for the proper use of PowerPoint presentations.

Proper Points of Power

Seth Godin, a Stanford and Tufts University graduate who popularized the concept of permission marketing, states his five rules to a productive and winning PowerPoint presentation:

No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken.
No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images.
No dissolves, spins or other transitions.
Sound effects can be used a few times per presentation, but never use the sound effects that are built in to the program. Instead, rip sounds and music from CDs and leverage the Proustian effect this can have. If people start bouncing up and down to the Grateful Dead, you’ve kept them from falling asleep, and you’ve reminded them that this isn’t a typical meeting you’re running.
Don’t hand out print-outs of your slides. They don’t work without you there.

Godin also goes into detail about the functioning of the brain in regards to PowerPoints, stating:

“Our brains have two sides. The right side is emotional, musical and moody. The left side is focused on dexterity, facts and hard data. When you show up to give a presentation, people want to use both parts of their brain. So they use the right side to judge the way you talk, the way you dress and your body language. Often, people come to a conclusion about your presentation by the time you’re on the second slide. After that, it’s often too late for your bullet points to do you much good.”

While the right side of the brain is all about showmanship, the left side requires reinforced data to convey an approachable and acceptable opinion. Thus, it is easy to see why many see PowerPoint as an ineffective tool in producing a functioning information tool. Commonly, presenters only focus on one side of the brain. Many presentations rely on blocks of facts to convey opinion, relegating human showmanship as an unnecessary juvenile function. Yet, information takes precedent over energy and enthusiasm.

Two studies focused on the information learned through PowerPoint. The first study, Bartsch, R. A., & Cobern, K. M. (2003). Effectiveness of PowerPoint presentations in lectures, found information which stated “unrelated graphics have a negative effect on learning. (coherence theory).” The second study, Sugahara, S., & Boland, G. (Writer) (2006). The Effectiveness of PowerPoint Presentations in the Accounting Classroom, found that:

“Students may take less notes with PowerPoint. Bad effects of PowerPoint may overwhelm good effects. Slides used may have contained too much distractive material (coherence effect).”

These two studies demonstrate the importance of information and the ineffective ways PowerPoint can be used. Simple, broad slides that rely on the presenter (as bolstered by Godin’s argument) can account for a greater transferring of knowledge than can blocks of information. PowerPoint can still be effective, when produced with energy and passion related to the material without too much distractions.

The facets of a convincing PowerPoint presentation/argument include passion for the topic, reliance on the presenter’s knowledge, and an appeal to each side of the brain. The showmanship of the right complements the obsequious nature of the left. When questioned in 2009 about PowerPoint, Tufte relented on his “Evil” claims against, stating

“…I thought that too many PP presentations were not about truth and evidence. They were about power and marketing. That essay suggests PP, because of its cognitive style, is a moral or an ethical issue because PP so strongly enforces a certain type of cognitive style, which is not truth oriented but rather marketing oriented.”

Tufte complaints sound familiar, in that he 1)takes to task the false nature of marketing, 2)vilifies the lack of truth and knowledge in marketing and 3) questions the lack of cognitive style in appealing to the brain. The grievances of Tufte in 2003 would become synonymous with the findings of studies over the past decade.

Summary

These articles bring up interesting points about our use of PowerPoint. Either we need to seriously reconsider how we utilize this tool in classrooms and boardrooms, or we need an alternative that is easy on the eyes and just as simple to use. Neither of these presents a particularly attractive option to the modern student or businessman. Instead, we argue that every student at current universities must pass an aptitude test for MS programs like PowerPoint, focusing on both content and design. In addition, modern businesses should adopt the use of PowerPoint templates; files that can be used to create new presentations, allowing all company presentations to follow the same format and style. This helps avoid errors on the part of the designer by limiting the amount of on screen content and designing the slides for the most appealing use of company colors, logo’s and images.

It has become clear to us throughout the course of our research that PowerPoint is a tool that is both overused and underutilized. Its power comes from its ease of use and near worldwide adoption; and it would seem that these strengths constitute its weaknesses as well. Take the time to browse through our materials listed in the bibliography if you would like a more extensive guide to the proper use of PowerPoint.

Bibliography

Byrne, D. (2003, September). Learning to Love Powerpoint. Wired, (11.09). Retrieved from

     http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt1.html

Godin, S. (2007, January 29). Really Bad Powerpoint [Web log post]. Retrieved from

     http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/01/really_bad_powe.html

Tufte, E. (2003, September 1). Powerpoint Is Evil. Wired, (11.09)Retrieved from

     http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt1.html

Zachary, M., & Thralls, C. (n.d.). An Interview with Edward Tufte [Special section]. Technical

     Communication Quarterly.

(Studies Website: http://www.son.washington.edu/portals/Nursed/Enhancements/PPTresearch/ppt_effect.asp#bartsch)