I’ve just finished reading Don Norman’s spirited and well-argued defence of PowerPoint. In his view it is not PowerPoint that corrupts but bad arguments, bad speeches and poor preparation. He takes issue with Edward Tufte‘s arguments against PowerPoint (e.g. here in a Wired article: PowerPoint is evil):
Finally, let me review Tufte’s complaint about the presentation of data during the NASA Columbia incident. Here, Tufte points to a complex slide with 19 lines of text, with six different levels of hierarchy, displaying eleven sentences. The complaint, of course, is that the analyses failed to predict the actual damage that had occurred to the wing tiles when they had been struck by foam. Tufte goes on at excessive length to indicate why the slide is so poor and why it obscures information that might have led to a different conclusion. PowerPoint is bad, he concludes.
I differ most strongly with this assessment. Yes, the slide is very bad. Yes, it is almost incomprehensible. But in my opinion, the slide should have had less information on it—Tufte wants more information. He demonstrates this by showing how many words are on a page of a textbook. “So what?” I say. We read textbooks very differently than we listen to talks.
It’s easy for me to have my cake and eat it on this argument. I have argued both sides of the PowerPoint problem.
I’ve posted previously about the value of visual evidence and the way in which PowerPoint condenses thoughts into bullet points. Certainly, I use PowerPoint when I give speeches, but almost always use images and sometimes a few words per slide. Darren Strange has some good advice about making presentations and so does Guy Kawasaki.
I also respect the arguments from Presentation Zen that PowerPoint may have contributed to poor thinking in advance of the last Gulf War. And I’m a huge admirer of Tufte’s. I love the title of his new book: Beautiful Evidence.
In the end, blaming PowerPoint for bad presentations is like blaming Word for bad writing. At worst its an accomplice to a crime, not the criminal.
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Bad workman blaming his tools? No way can PowerPoint be drawn into or alongside any argument to apportion blame.
It is a tool and is a darned good product designed to assist speeches or presentation of data. The words and pictures displayed don’t get onto a slide by way of magic. The presenter puts them there. So leave Powerpoint out of it.
Focus anthing rotten with the speech or presentation where it belongs – solely on the presenter.
Thanks, Matthew, both for your own remarks and for the link to the Don Norman piece. You might also enjoy looking at a brief paper on Tufte and PowerPoint from my friends at Communication Partners: http://www.communipartners.com/articles_presentations.html.
Jean-luc Doumont also took issue with Tufte in the February 2005 issue of Technical Communication: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/stc/tc/2005/00000052/00000001/art00008 ($10 download).
If you ever get a chance to hear Jean-luc speak, do not pass it up. He uses PowerPoint effectively and his presentations are generally aimed at helping students and professional present information more effectively. His Web site is http://www.principiae.be/papers.html
Neill Archer Roan gives a lot of consideration to presenting in his blog at http://www.neillarcheroan.com/blog . It’s really worth checking this out.
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