It’s all gotten out of control and it’s time we came to our senses.
I’ve been asked by Olivia Mitchell what I would like to see happen with PowerPoint in 2009 in response to this rant post.
The biggest blessing for business presentations would be for us to put PowerPoint into perspective.
No one says ‘the slides’
If you were sitting in on of our masterclasses in presentation skills, towards the beginning I would ask you to partner up with someone else and recall some excellent speakers (people who inspired you, or who were at least interesting or memorable). With a marker and a pack of Postits, you would then have 5 minutes to write down, one concept per PostIt, the different things that those speakers did that made them interesting or inspiring.
All sorts of areas come up: passion, voice, gesture, story, using ordinary language… a whole variety of things (which we would then go on to cluster together and use as a reference).
I bet you wouldn’t have said ‘Good slides’.
In amongst all of those thousands and thousands of Postits in all these years, never has anyone written ‘Good slides.’ Ever. Eh-ver.
Red herring
PowerPoint is a technological red herring. It puts us off the scent because it fulfils so many psychological and emotional needs for the speaker.
Currently I see PowePoint being used to for four different purposes:
- As a tool to plan presentations.
- As autocue/prompt for the speaker.
- As documentation for people to take away with them, or for people who couldn’t attend the presentation.
- As a visual aid during the session.
For everything but the last one, PowerPoint fares very poorly.
And as most people want to hide when they’re presenting, making a big ol’ screen the centre of attention just feels safer than having all the eyes on you.
PowerPoint matters less than we think
In terms of impact, slides have as much impact as the the fonts and the layout of a document.
If you gave me a document in Comic Sans, or Papyrus, it might put me off. No paragraphs, or all in 6 point, or lots of seplling mstkeas and, you’re right, it would distract me.
But the main cause of success or failure is the content of the communication and the way it is structured.
We focus on PowerPoint because it’s obvious
So much training and discussion is placed on ‘the slides’ as they are the most quantifiable and standardisable (sorry) aspect of presentations.
However, presentations are an unnatural form of communication taking place at the beginning or in the middle of longer, complex conversations, attempting to have an impact on messy, difficult-to-control human relationships.
Let’s keep the slides in perspective.
My 2009 PowerPoint wishes
Actually, sod ‘wishes’. In 2009, I decree that presenters:
- Place more focus on the planning and structure of presentations, including educating themselves a little in the psychology of communication.
- Plan by concentrating on the people being communicated with, rather than the output of the speaker, definitely away from the computer.
- Make handouts in Word (or a package designed for producing printed material), make speaker notes on paper/cards, and follow the Lightheart visual aid rule (“You only need a visual aid in a presentation if you would need one in conversation”).
- Use the B key more often.
What do you reckon? Am I off-beam here? Are the slides more relevant than I’m giving them credit for? Leave a comment, do.
In other news:
We have had a busy Christmas in the UK, including 4 days doing the Christmas markets in Berlin, and now Stuart is back in Singapore. I’m staying here until the end of January, doing some work whilst spending time with our poor abandonded families, including teaching both Mum and Mum-in-law how to use their new laptops.
I’m reading and loving Anathem, Who Would You Be Without Your Story? and Save The Cat Goes to the Movies. I’m also brushing up my German with fab new ipod stuff (3 separate links there). Keeping me company in my cold, lonely attic flat (poor tropical flower that I am) are Skins and Star Trek: TNG series 1.
Oh, and Australia was a fantastically exhausting, epic romp. Me and the Mum-in-law laughed, cried, cheered, booed and, at one point, grabbed each other and looked through our fingers. Just when you think it’s over, it really starts. Loved it.
(Loosely) related articles
~ 13 reasons why slideshow presentations are stupid and evil
~ Marinading the big lump of clay – getting presentation material together
~ How to review your presentation: Two things people get wrong
PowerPoint is not, and never has been, the problem. Most ppt’s use 5%of it’s full capabilities and judging by the many, many presentations I have seen about the same % of people really understand how to use PowerPoint. Again it’s about the same % of people who understand how to make a great presentation primarily because all the things that we all know should be in a great presentation but is missing.
In life many traning & development tools are miss-used, PPT is just another one.
Hi Ray
Thanks for your 2penn’th on my 2penn’th!
Andrew
Great post. I am hoping that 2009 becomes the year of the great PowerPoint (and Keynote) revolt. It is time to come right out and say that slides seldom matter. It is the content and the skill of the presenter that matters. Content and skill are tough; PowerPoint slides are easy.
I would add one item to your Purposes list. That item is: PowerPoint makes people appear to be busy. Notice I didn’t say productive. The first steps of effective presentation design sort of look like day dreaming. Fire up PowerPoint and you get the feeling you are doing something. It may be something stupid but, still, you are doing something.
Jeff
You’re totally right when you say that the first steps of presentation design look like day dreaming.
My friend Michael Breen (http://www.MBNLP) said in reference to firing up the PowerPoint, ‘Feels like thinking, doesn’t it?’
Stuck in my mind.
People – check out Jeff’s blog – it’s laugh-out-loud funny. To presentation nerdy me, anyway.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the shout out.
It is time that we embrace the “popular” PowerPoint design trend. We will be assimilated. There is no need to fight it.
If we were feeling really radical we could say that Powerpoint, and all the books and trainers that go along with it, is built around the fallacy that we lack the ability to impress or inspire without whizzy slides. Zooming out the big idea is that fundamentally we’re lacking and our only cure is to consume.
I’m edging towards some sort of paranoid anti-capitalist sentiment here, which feels a little 1980s. But I do think that there is a lot of fluff and bunk around that doesn’t really have a significant need upon which it can justify its existence. Powerpoint presentations are often fluffy and full of bunk – as are many key note speakers!
It’s all been said before but we’re definitely in an era of authenticity. BS and hype stopped working some time ago.
My question would be about aesthetics. Powerpoint, or SlideRocket, slides can provide a beautiful visual background for your stage. I do think that the environment you present in effects what the audience understand and remember of what you communicate. Visuals that don’t distract but bring in a sort of background emotional context for your message are enjoyable.
I’m concerned that if you totally stuck to the ‘only use it if you’d need to draw something in a conversation’ rule we risk developing a rather brutalist approach to presentations. We don’t want to take out all the fun and the beauty.
Hi Natasha
As always, your fluently expressed thoughts have made me think. Hard.
I’m beginning to think I need a more sophisticated approach to visual aids, especially for technical people.
I’m thinkin’, and makin’ notes, and googlin’, and readin’ and askin’…
More next week.
Andrew,
I was struck by your comment “it fulfils so many psychological and emotional needs FOR THE SPEAKER.”
I hear a lot of people complain about how many bad PowerPoint presentations they’ve been subjected to, but I hear very few people admit that they’ve subjected people to bad ones themselves.
That leads me to a conclusion similar to your observation: PowerPoint is more for presenters (their insecurities or ignorance about preparing and giving presentations) than for the audience their need to understand and care about the presenter’s ideas).
Chris
I’d like to take issue with Ray, the very first comment here…. PowerPoint does do more than people know about that is certainly true and in that sense it’s not the problem.
But the fact that it’s so damned HARD to do the remaining 95% makes it a poorely designed piece of software. What’s more, the defaults are shocking. For example, what’s the default font? Something useful for presenting, like Helvetica? No. Times New Roman – complete with serifs, for goodness’ sake!
I struggled with PowerPoint even before I knew there was a better alternative. Now, having used those (much more intuitively usable) there’s no way I’d go back to it.
PowerPoint isn’t the ONLY problem, I agree, but it’s PART of the problem.
S