What else is new?

[alexpgp]

An article at ars technica refers to a study published in an academic journal suggesting that animations in PowerPoint presentations actually hinder audience comprehension.

And that applies what one might consider to be the most benign animation, the so-called "builder," in which some number of points related to a topic can be made to appear on a slide one at a time, one below the other, allowing the presenter to comment on each point before going on to the next. (That it applies to presentations where the originator took, as a design requirement, the need to use at least four different animation effects per slide should not even be open to discussion. :^)

It also reminded me of a horrendous job from some time ago, involving PowerPoint, where you couldn't actually see most of the presentation unless you ran the bloody thing, because a hefty percentage of slides relied on animations that built several slides worth of information into a heap on one slide that sort of made sense when viewed in presentation mode (the same result could have been achieved by breaking each such slide into the requisite number of "ordinary" slides), but which was untranslatable without a huge amount of dismantlement and reassembly.

But what am I going on about? I just completed my first pass through a job that will linger in my memory for some time, associated with a word that starts with the letter "s" (and that word ain't "shiny," let me tell you).

PowerPoint is evil.

Cheers...

Comments

[bdunbar.livejournal.com]

PowerPoint isn't evil. People who use PowerPoint wrong are evil.

Maybe that's a bit harsh. But not much.

And that applies what one might consider to be the most benign animation, the so-called "builder,"

Obvious in hindsight - one is not supposed to comment on each point. The presenter's job is to assume the audience is literate and explain the the idea behind the slide, not read to adults. You know this of course.

Having the bullet points appear one .. by .. one is going to enforce that bad habit.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. :^)

The need to comment on a point depends on how the point is worded, I guess.

When I worked as a product manager at Borland (back in the glory days), I was taught - among other things - the "4 x 4" rule ("no more than four lines per slide, no more than four words per line"). The result was a presentation designed so that most of the information came out of my mouth, and not off the screen.

Most PowerPoint presentations I see today really are not presentable, in the sense of someone standing in front of the room and speaking. (Or at least they shouldn't be, for the reason you point out: you can get everything you need out of the presentation with your eyes.)

Cheers...

[crocotiger.livejournal.com]

Ох уж этот ПауэрПойнт...

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Да, ох!

Cheers...

[platofish.livejournal.com]

Bad powerpoint presentations are now so common I barely notice them anymore. The most annoying are the presentations filled with animations - the first bullet appears in a blaze of revolving flames, the second in a cosmic starburst, etc. etc.

I love the comparison of Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs in presentation zen (http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_zen_estheti.html)

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

I read your observation last night. Today at school I watched roughly a dozen sixth graders present power point reports. Granted, they are just kids. And it was necessary for these kids to write out long paragraphs on these PPTs so that the other teacher could grade them without their being present. But I couldn't help but consider your comment as I watched one child after another belabor the PPT gimmicks. Yes, I saw a lot of blending and fading slides. It was impressive. But veerrrry distracting!

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

The gimmicks are bad enough, but the really sad thing is that the whole idea of a presentation is being ever more often allowed to rot by the roadside.

In organizations such as NASA, this kind of approach may be understandable: just as the "other teacher" in your example needed enough meat on which to base a grade, most presentations at NASA briefings have to be able to stand on their own legs after the briefing, so that people who weren't there (or - more likely - weren't paying attention because they were answering email on their Blackberrys) can derive some benefit from the report.

I would argue for presentations where slides are made from a public speaking perspective, i.e., for the purpose of delivering information orally, with only essential visual props, where the "meat" (i.e., the underlying information) is set forth, if necessary, in slide notes (View|Notes Page from the menu bar).

Cheers...

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

I also have to comment on the pitiful quality of these power points. Again, yes, they were just sixth graders. But the number of horribly worded sentences was astounding. We got stuff like:

Their was three aftershocks that many people lost died. and broken briges. Liquification* happened to many places.

* it should be spelled and pronounced liquifaction.

Actually, I am totally failing in my attempt to recreate the (all too many) moments. It was obvious that they never even once reread their work to make corrections. Numbers were incorrectly said, ie, 23 million for 23,000. One girl talked about the Loma Prieta earthquake and never once mentioned the urban area of the Bay Area. Oyveh!