Sacred Cow #8: The Laser Pointer Is A Useful Tool « Thoughts On Presenting & Design

12May/097

Sacred Cow #8: The Laser Pointer Is A Useful Tool

We've seen these people. They're all over the place. In some organizations, it's institutionalized. What I'm concerned about is the laser pointer. Not everyone uses them, but I don't see anyone standing up and pleading for these people with frickin' lasers in their hands to stop. It seems, at least in my stomping grounds, that it's just accepted that laser pointers, being presentation tools are wholly appropriate. I've had one offered to me after making quite clear (politely) that I do not use them because I don't use "Reading Rainbow" slides.

It's not malicious. They don't know they're harming their presentation. They think they're being helpful. However, except for the extremely rare occasion, they're not.

One of the reasons people use these devices is to make sure people can see what it is they're talking about. If you need a pointing device to emphasize some text, then you've got way too much text. If you need a laser to point out an element in a diagram or chart, then it's way too complicated. Use of laser pointers is most often a symptom of a greater problem; namely the slides are not designed appropriately as visual reinforcements. Unfortunately, laser pointers don't help. The audience is still going to be overwhelmed by excessive or excessively complex slide content. The small laser dot just forces them to try to concentrate on yet one more thing, which brings me to my 2nd point.

In a normal bad slide situation, you basically have 2 points of interest competing for attention:

the presenter
the slides

Your brain can only pay attention to one thing at a time, so this is already a nearly impossible task for the audience. When you introduce a laser pointer, you double the points of interest competing for attention.

the presenter
the laser pointer
the little red dot
the slides

Presenter with a "laser" While trying to listen to the presenter (1), you're looking at the presenter's (2) hand with the laser pointer to gain an initial visual reference for the location of the little red dot (3) as they address the content on the slide (4). Occastionally, the audience will go back to the hand (2), especially in cases when the little red dot (3) is moving around a lot. Asking anyone to be able to follow along and remember the message is just asking too much.

If you feel compelled to use a laser pointer, stop. Evaluate your slides. Are the diagrams complicated? If so, simplify them. Are they text heavy? If so, reduce the text so that no more than 3 seconds is required to absorb the message of the whole slide. You should even consider using something more visual. The written word is a terribly inefficient form of communication. Text is recorded by the brain as a complex visual, specifically as a sequence of shapes, and then processed by the verbal section of the brain. That's twice the effort of a visual alone, or even the spoken word (verbal) alone.

So, please, put that laser pointer down and back away.

Top Image credit: Ushlambad, used under a Creative Commons license.

Tagged as: Presenting; technique; tools Leave a comment

Ellen Finkelstein

Like coreymol, I add animation to a slide when I'll want to call out a particular part. Usually, I just add a red circle around a number, or part of a chart.
coreymol

Good stuff, and I mostly agree, in some situations I think that "visual" clues can aid in the presentation maybe not a laser pointer. When I create slides I know what I will need or want to place emphasis on so instead of using a pointer I build in actions to my slides for text I will change the color of the important words or sentence or maybe have an underline appear. for objects I have a shape appear around the area I want to point out. pretty effective if done correctly.
WVMikeP

Very good points
Olivia Mitchell

Hi Mike
I agree with you that the laserpointer is a wimpy tool which most of the time adds nothing to a presentation.

But I don't agree that your slides have to be so simple that the audience never needs any guidance from you as to where to look. I think it works great to physically go over to your slide and point to where you want your audience to look. For a fantastic example of this see Hans Rosling on TED.

Olivia
WVMikeP

Hans Rosling's presentation is a great example of how to interact with your data. By doing it the way he did minimizes the focal points such that you can see what's happening with the data and it's not at all removed from the presenter and his presentation. All too often, instead of bringing the data and presentation together the way he did, people will just try to point to it in a detached manner with their little laser.

That's not to say, however, that there wasn't room for improvement. It would have been great if he could have shared that animation outside of his statistical program. There was a lot of visual distractions around the edges. Also, remove some of the extra "ink" and you'll have a chart that's easier to read. Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," though a very academic, and for some, difficult read, is in my opinion a must read for anyone working with charts. Heck, some times, even tables are more appropriate than charts. This isn't the case with Hans Rosling's data, but we had one such example at work where a colleague was trying to force data into a bar chart. It was an incomprehensible mess. It's not a statement about her, but rather that the chart could not possibly be made to do what she wanted it to do. A redesigned data table emphasizing information density (as opposed to data density) brought forward the message she was trying to get across much more effectively.
Stephen Hampshire

I agree with the point you're making, but "The written word is a terribly inefficient form of communication." is just not true. It's very efficient, done well (after all, that's why blogs like this one exist, no?). The problem is that it doesn't mix well with someone talking.

Many presentations would be better being replaced altogether by a well-written document.
WVMikeP

When I said it was a "terribly inefficient form of communication, I'm referring to the amount of effort required by the brain, compared to other means, to absorb and process the information. The brain isn't wired to specifically process the written word. It's a task we force upon it because humanity has developed a good means of preserving what we say beyond the moment in which it is spoken.

When you read, you're actually recognizing the shapes of the collection of letters. This is one of the reasons, among others such as the thickness and x-height, etc., why some typefaces are more readable than others. Your brain takes those shapes and moves that information from the visual to the verbal areas of the brain. This is where the inefficiency comes it.

True, for blogs and other similar mediums, the written word is by far the best choice. However, when giving a presentation, mixing the written and spoken word together forces too much mental effort on the audience.

A good book that covers this is "Brain Rules" by John Medina. Olivia Mitchell also wrote this at http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/visual-t...

Lastly, I will agree that many presentations would be better replaced altogether by a well-written document. Many times, we're dragged into meetings to endure an unnecessary presentation.