Displaying More Complex Data
I'm going to take a brief break in the sacred cow series to address something that came up in my 9-to-5. It was one of those situations where it was clear there was a need for a better solution, but it wasn't obvious exactly what that solution was. This did not involve presentation slides, but it is no less relevant to similar situations that happen to involve slides.
I was asked to review a report on an evaluation of some solutions against a list of criteria. At the end was a chart much like this one to the right. (The data in this and all following examples are not the same as what I encountered (for hopefully obvious reasons), but should be similar enough in concept to be illustrative.) As you can see, even when you click on the chart to see the full-sized version, it's unreadable. The story that the chart is trying to tell isn't at all obvious and it takes far too much effort just to read it, data point by data point. There had to be a better way.
Remembering what I learned from Edward Tufte, I suggested that perhaps this is a situation where a data table would actually be more appropriate. However, I also added that we might want to use some color to help convey the story rather than make the reader make heads or tails of 64 numbers that look similar enough to visually blend in together.
What I got back was something like this. By this time, we didn't have time to continue to tackle the problem and it was a valiant effort on their part, but this too had its problems. On the positive side, there was good color contrast to visually separate the values qualitatively. However, what hurt this design was how the text was unreadable in some colors. Changing the text colors in the red and green cells only probably would not have helped the readability either. There was also the issue, in my mind, of too many qualitative distinctions. The scale wasn't logical, but adjusting the scale with the four qualities intact didn't improve things either.
Since there was no more time to make modifications, this is what we were left with. What I did do, though, was to tackle this problem as an academic exercise.
The first changes I made were to change the number of quality distinctions from four (Great, Good, OK, Bad) to three (Good, Acceptable, Poor) and try to make the text more readable. To make the numbers easier to read, I got rid of the colored cell backgrounds and instead applied the color to the text. To keep the reader from getting lost in the data, I used alternating shading for the rows, a subtle, but effective technique. What I had now was better, but still could use improvement.
The next change I made was simple, but yet yielded a much easier to read data table. I split the categories up into groups of four. This could represent groupings of categories or it could merely be a visual break; a chunking of data, if you will. Breaking data up into manageable chunks makes it easier for the reader to consume and remember the data you're providing.
Now, this seemed to be a workable solution. I then asked myself what other ways I could realize the same or better effect. At this moment, I remembered the well known and higly effective tables that are found throughout Consumer Reports magazines. Sometimes they contain data and sometimes they just contain symbols. These symbols could take the place of the colored text to provide a more meaningful table. This next version contained my variation of this technique. I created symbols similar in concept to those in the famous magazine and placed them along with the data, which are now in a simple black typeface.
My next thought was, "What if the raw data is not necessary for this given audience? What if the high-level meaning or importance of the values needs to be conveyed and not the values themselves? What we have now is a table with just the symbols and no data, save for the total values at the bottom. Now, instead of giving the reader a whole lot to read and consider, we're giving them what's important to them: the simplified significance of the values.
You can, of course, apply the chunking of the data to these symbols as well. These symbols are information to be consumed just as the raw data was.
The lesson from this whole exercise was that you should always consider and reconsider how you display your data. Consider an approach that is different than what you would normally take. Put yourself in your reader's or audience's shoes and don't stop improving it until it has the effectiveness that you would expect it to have.
Sacred Cow #7: All You Need Is An Afternoon
"Get your presentation, complete with slides done this afternoon. You need to present tomorrow morning."
I'm sure we've all had this thrown on us. Slap something together and deliver it. PowerPoint's easy to use, so why would you need more than an afternoon, right? How about a whole day to make a slide deck "more attractive?" It's this perceived efficiency of PowerPoint as a tool that feeds this particular sacred cow.
As Miracle Max said in The Princess Bride, "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
Jan Schultink has a good post on quick slide make-over tricks. There's some very good ideas in there. However, it's one thing to make slides attractive and another thing all together to make them effective. Deadlines be damned, I strive for effective slides first and foremost. Pretty slides are of no use if they don't help your presentation.
Take, for example, a deck full of bullet points, excessive text, and overly-complex, yet information-sparse (as opposed to dense) diagrams. You can readily make those slides more attractive, but to make them effective, you need to understand the presentation. You need to know which of the points and ideas in the slides are those that actually need to be driven home. You need to know what the salient message in those diagrams are. You need to know this information if you're going to not only redesign the slides, but also architect the information in an effective way.
Doing it right requires more than just better scheduling of your own time. It requires a change in the office culture. Management needs to understand the difference between attractive, yet effective slides and attractive distractions. Management needs to learn that slapping together some bullet points together is not enough. They need to learn that old assumptions about PowerPoint slides have been discredited. Management needs to learn that practices that they employ, such as last minute slide design assignments, simply because that's just the way it's "always" been done make it a sacred cow. As we know, sacred cows are better off dead...and on my plate.
Image credit: Aeioux, used under a Creative Commons license.
Sacred Cow #6: The Audience Wants A Detailed Agenda
We’ve all seen slides like this. It’s your standard title and bullet list slide. The title is “Agenda” and below it is a detailed list of each topic that will be discussed. Oh, don’t forget the Q&A at the end.
Why do we see these slides all the time? They’re not really helpful. They encourage us to read and not listen. Many times, they practically tell the story or enough to give you a false impression of what the story actually is. What we have here is the sixth sacred cow of presentation slides: The Detailed Agenda.
This qualifies as a sacred cow because the only reason people seem to waste our time with these slides is because that’s the way it’s always been done. That, as we know, is what defines a sacred cow. And like all sacred cows, this too needs to be turned into hamburger before the charcoal goes out.
Now I’m not suggesting that you ditch your agenda slides. It’s important to let the audience know what you’re going to be talking about. A couple effective ways I have seen this done is when Steve Jobs tells us he’s going to show us 3 cool new products. There’s no slide saying this or even what they are. He will, however, have each product introduced by a big number (1, 2, or 3), followed by the product or a series of suspense-building slides (think the intro of the iPhone). The beauty of this is that the agenda is simple and memorable. By not using slides, it helps build suspense. Alternatively, you can tell your audience the three things you will be talking about and proceed. This works if they’re simple, logical, and almost obvious.
If you are going to put your agenda on slides, try an approach that doesn’t turn your audience off just as you’re getting started. Stay away, if you can, from the unimaginative agenda = title + bullet x (n). Of course, it should be visually consistent with your deck’s overal all design as well as be content-appropriate. In the embedded slide deck below, consider the following possibilities:
Conversational Style. Instead of just saying “Agenda,” try something like, “What we’re going to talk about today.” Being rigid and stand-offish can alienate your audience and discourage them from giving you the attention you want. This is a time to focus their attention on what you want to share with them.
Pie Chart. Yeah, this is a bit off the wall, but go ahead and create a pie chart with the pie values being the amount of minutes you intend to spend on each section. The pie slices give a visual representation of how much time you intend to spend on each topic, which would be more effective at facilitating storing this information in memory than using text alone would be. Don’t display the values, but rather the labels. Make each pie slice come in one at a time. Oh, and despite how bad 3D charts are for data, this is a time where you should feel free to go 3D.
Call-outs On A Timeline. Create a line across your slide that represents the intended length of your presentation. At the appropriate times along the timeline, insert call-outs for each topic. Again, bring them in one at a time. Because time is linear, this is by far more effective than the pie chart approach and infinitely more effective than simple bullets.
Blocks On A Timeline. Another timeline-based approach is to take boxes and add them to the timeline one after the other, each representing a topic.
There is no one way to share your agenda, but displaying a detailed or even a simple, yet unoriginal agenda slide does you no favors. Get creative. Try any of these ideas or come up with your own creative way to let your audience know quickly, simply, and effectively what you’ll be talking about.
Image credit: xcode, used under a Creative Commons license.
Sacred Cow #5: If the Audience Is Technical, They Want To See Detailed Diagrams
This sacred cow is roaming the halls where I work. It's old. It's loud. It smells. It's abusive. It's obnoxious, and it rudely disrupts nearly every technical presentation I have to sit through. Unfortunately, we're not unique in our suffering. This parasitic bovine is present everywhere you have technical people. Fortunately, there are treatments for this affliction if you know where to look. This is a sacred cow that must die else the brain rot that follows it will infect management, sales, and, oh... too late.
Well, rather than letting the technical community continue our sacred cow herding, we can be good citizens and slay this beast. Trolling SlideShare for some good examples of bad examples, I came across a gem. Complicated diagrams, despite protests from worshipers of this sacred cow, do not enhance the presentation. They do not aid comprehension. In truth, they harm and inhibit comprehension. Slides such as the example to the right can introduce what's called "map shock," a form of information overload. The Information Design Handbook by Jenn & Ken Visocky O'Grady describe this as:
"...also sometimes called visual shock, is a phenomenon experienced by individuals when encountering complex maps, diagrams, or pictorial representations. Information processing stops as the person tries to orient themselves to the overwhelming quantity of data. Users describe a sense of being lost, and of not knowing where to start, often accompanied by a physical and sometimes even audible, reaction."
(p.75) emphasis mine
All too often, people delivering technical presentations are doing this to their audience while expecting them to retain this information. It's just asking too much of the audience, no matter how technical they are. Even though the audience may be technical, the same guidelines that many of us who are passionate about great presentations write about still apply. We may have different aptitudes, but we all have brains that all operate under the same principles. Attention is attention. Retention is retention.
If you absolutely need to get that message across with a diagram that, by its very nature, is technical, try applying these guidelines:
Build it slowly. Rather than overwhelming your audience with all of that complexity at once, gradually build it one piece at a time. Don't display the next piece until you're ready to talk about it.
Keep it simple. Keep each build stage simple enough that someone in the audience can absorb it quickly (3 seconds or less). Ask yourself, "Would this work on a billboard?"
Consider the folks in the back of the room. Don't forget the people in the back. If there's text and they can't read it, you're not helping them at all. They're either going to ignore you as they try to figure it out or give up and lose out on this important visual.
It is important, right? If it's not important for the comprehension of your message, leave it out. Otherwise, it's just noise.
Take it easy with Visio. Copying and pasting visio drawings into your slides may be the easy way out, but rarely is doing the right thing easy. If you can't draw your diagram within your slideware itself, take several snapshots of your diagram in each logical build stage. Don't just throw up a fully completed diagram unless your purpose is to observe first-hand the effects of map shock.
Observing these principles will require extra time and effort, but the results are worth it. Educate those around you. Let's put a long overdue end to this sacred cow.
mage credit: Automania, used under a Creative Commons license.
Sacred Cow #4: Using {feature} Or {plugin} Will Make Me Look Savvy.
This sacred cow is such a no-brainer that it begs the question of whether it is in fact a sacred cow or that it's just poor amateurish judgement. It's one of the reasons why many people hate slideware. The answer to this isn't so clear-cut. In many cases it is the latter. In those, it's just someone who merely didn't know any better and could easily be talked down from the ledge.
In some cases, though, it's dogma. It's the manager who wants "cool." It's these people that see it as gospel that to wow your audience, you need to wow them with your mad PowerPoint skills. It's these people who are more concerned with you having slides that "look good" rather than slides that get the message across effectively.
You'll also find that people who hold onto these sacred cows get excited about new transitions and animations in the latest version of PowerPoint (or Keynote). Walls of flame, sparkles, anything that glows, glitters, flies, slides, or makes noise is considered progress and essential to that next great presentation.
This sacred cow is even represented by unbridled excitement for upcoming tools like pptPlex and Prezi. While they do have that "wow" factor and they could in fact be used to make highly effective visuals, they'll more often than not be used inappropriately. Not too long from now, we'll see these tools used with the frequency and in a manner such that the daily stream of cursing of PowerPoint that I see in Twitter will also be directed at these tools.
I'm no luddite. I truly believe that these features and tools, if used with restraint and the effectiveness of the message as the prime consideration, can be very powerful tools in our tool box. However, it's those believers in this fourth sacred cow who take it as a given that flash and shock and awe are the keys to great presentations. What these people need to learn is that the secret to this sacred cow is that pig with lipstick is still a pig.
Image credit: emilylt, used under a Creative Commons license.
Recording Your Keynote-based Presentation
Sometimes, we may find ourselves in a situation where we want to make our presentation (at least the audio part) and slides available for viewing at a later date. Fortunately, Keynote allows you to do this, by recording your presentation with the appropriately named option in the "Play" menu. Unfortunately, Keynote will only take one recording. You can't piece multiple recordings together. If you're like me and you feel more comfortable in front of an audience than recording your talk, this can be a problem. If I want to be sure of a clean, error-free recording, then the only reasonable option for me is to record it section by section.
With this limitation of Keynote, I sought to find a solution. The answer I came up with was to use iMovie to put the piecs together.
For the example below, I took the "charts" section of the slide deck I used for a brown bag presentation I gave a few weeks ago. I then broke that section into two: 1) bar charts and 2) pie and line charts. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not as comfortable recording my talk as I am in front of an audience. As such, I'm much more error-prone and required six or more takes for each of the two individual recordings. Neither is as good as I'd hope, but it should be good enough for you to see what I did. As soon as I got a recording that I was willing to live with, I went to the "Share" menu and chose "Export." From there, I exported my recording to a QuickTime movie. I then cleared my existing recording and followed the same steps for the second recording.
iMovie with 2 clips
Now that I have two QuickTime movies I need to piece them together. iMovie makes this very easy. I started by importing the two clips. Once I did that, I dragged the two clips to the project window. If I needed to, I could have done some editing: cutting off dead space, edited the audio, etc. For this simple example, I merely had one immediately follow the other. Once done with any editing that you intend to do, export or upload your video to any one of the options in iMovie's "Share" menu.
iMovie surely gives you a great deal of creative and editing options. However, it surely would be great if the more basic capability to piece together partial recordings were in Keynote itself. With that said, if you have Keynote, you are guaranteed to have iMovie (hopefully, the more powerful iMovie '09) and thus have the ability to record your presentation with the quality you expect.
Make Your Data Pop
Think what you will of him or his opinions, but Glenn Beck was the stereotypical presenter sharing data in tabular format on slides.
Some slides were more effective than others and some highlighted the perils of adding bullets after bullets or even rows after rows. You're forced to shrink the text and the message gets lost in the delivery.
Now, no matter what your data is, even if it has little economic, political, or scientific importance, it's critical to never manipulate the data. What you can and should do is format the data so that not only is it as truthful as it is in its rawest form, but that the underlying message is brought out more clearly.
With that said, let's look at a recreation of one of the slides he showed:
Within the wall of text, there's a message in there somewhere. OK, 13% believe that if you earn between $151,000 and $250,000, you're rich. Fine. Does that mean those same people think that if you earn outside that range, say $269,000, you're not rich? Of course not. That's a given, logically. Being "rich" is a state of positive wealth. You're not less rich if you're more wealthy. It's just impossible. It's a conclusion that couldn't be honestly debated even by the most semantically-obsessed individuals. Here's the key: If you're going to draw conclusions from the raw data, make sure you're on solid ground. If the data and conclusions were presented in a meeting or conference, provide the raw data in the handouts. Not only does it free the presentation from slides that make the audience work too hard to decipher, but it gives you a certain amount of transparency that shows you didn't monkey with the data to force it into the conclusion that you desired.
So, our first step is to get the data out of the table and into a chart. Since we're dealing with percentages, a pie chart is the way to go.
The pie chart using the data from the table really doesn't tell us anything that the table doesn't already tell us. It just gives the numbers a visual sense of scale. However, watching the video clip (starting at 4:41), Glenn makes his point that 20% of those polled thought those making $251,000 or more are rich. Well, based on the logic we observed above, that's not true. What we have here is not only a poorly designed slide, but an inability to read a data table.
If you apply the logic that anyone who thinks that someone making anywhere less than $251,000 is rich would also think that someone making $501,000 or more is rich, then you can create the following chart:
If you speak to Glenn's statement regarding the number of people who thought you're rich if you make more than $251,000, then you'd have the following chart:
That's a different percentage than he gave, isn't it? Well, as I said, he apparently has trouble reading data tables. What we have here as well is a slide that makes the point he was trying to make much more clearly and with more impact. Applying the same logic to the other poll answers yields:
If you want to make your data really pop and help you drive your message home, consider and focus on your message. Display the data in a way that reinforces your message, yet maintains the integrity and fidelity of the data.
Addition Through Subtraction
Craig Strachan has an excellent post on his site titled, "You will never fit everything in." In it, he stresses the importance of limiting the content to what's appropriate for the audience and the time allotted. You can have the greatest slides in the world, but if you have so much content that you have to either race through it all or have to skip through over some, you're hurting your message.
It all comes down to preparation. The effectiveness of those 15, 20, 30, etc. minutes you're up in front of your audience all rides on your prep work.
Understand how much time you have. If you don't know how much time you'll be given, ask. If you still don't know, and frankly, even if you do, plan accordingly. Have a plan A, plan B, and plan C. Even if you're budgetted 30 minutes, there's always the chance someone else could cut into your time due to their lack of planning. If you all of a sudden have 15 fewer minutes to give your talk, if you planned for this possibility, then you should be able adjust your content. If you're using slides, before you get up, set to "skip" those that you need to so the audience doesn't get the impression that you're skipping something important.
Understand your audience. If you're presenting to a bunch of sales reps, leave out the content useful for teachers if it's not relevant to your audience. Cutting out irrelevant content saves time for relevant content and can help keep your audience engaged. If you're telling them something irrelevant, they'll disengage and their minds will wander. It's here where you need to remind yourself of the adage, "addition through subtraction," where taking something irrelevant away will actually add to your message.
Practice, practice, practice. There's no way to tell how long your talk will take if you don't practice. You should do at least 3 full run-throughs with a timer. Keynote has a great timer in the presenter view. If it's too long, look for areas to cut, either in slides or your speech, without compromising your message. Once you make the cuts, practice again at least 3 times more. I'll put hours over a few days into practice for a 15 minute talk and every time it pays dividends.
Kick-starting Creativity
We've all had those moments where, creatively, we hit a wall. We're thinking about this one slide and no matter how hard we try, we either have difficulty thinking of a design that works or everything we come up with just isn't good enough.
Well, one of my passions is photography and the only way I can get better is by actually getting out there and getting practice. The problem is, I hit that wall where I couldn't think of where to go or what to shoot. I've hit Harper's Ferry and the C&O Canal so many times, I couldn't think of anything original to focus on. Cities, be they Washington, DC, or any of the much smaller versions in the area aren't of any interest to me (I'm a rural kind of person). I was in a rut, but I really, really wanted to get out there shooting. I just needed to get my creative juices flowing again.
Apple On the Snow
Thanks to a trip up into the wintry north to see family, I learned that what I needed was a change of scenery. Getting away from the everyday forced me into a fresh and new view of the world around me. Compositions started forming in my mind again. One morning while up there, right as the sun was coming up, I went out in the sub-zero air to take some photos. I didn't have to go very far, either. Heck, I didn't even have to leave my aunt & uncle's property to get some material.
Later that day, as I was going through my photos, my aunt commented how she always felt she had a beautiful home, but never quite saw it the way I had captured it. At that point, I knew the change of scenery not only helped, but was exactly what I needed.
Granted, a 12-hour trip by car and train isn't always practical or necessary. On the contrary, we can probably achieve the same results by taking a walk to some place we've never been or haven't been to in quite a while. If it's an area you normally see from within a car, travel it by foot. Force yourself into unfamiliar territory, or at least an out of the ordinary situation. Force your mind's eye to view, digest, and perhaps interpret the world around you in a fresh and new way.
DIY Stock Photography
Have you run into a situation where you need a photo for a slide and you either can't find one that works and looks just right on services such as iStockPhoto or for a shot like this, you can't justify paying for a photo of some Sharpies? You can try the Creative Commons route at flickr, but even then it's a crap-shoot whether you'll find something worthy of being included among your slides.
Well, a lot of us presenting slide design bloggers have suggested using your own photos in place of stock photos when you can. Not only can it be cheaper, but you're guaranteed to be the first to use that particular photo.
I faced this particular issue recently when working on a personal project of mine. I needed two different photos: 1) Sharpies and 2) Tools that can support the message "layout." Nothing good was coming up on iStockPhoto and frankly, for at least the photo of Sharpies, I just couldn't bring myself to spend the $3 for it. Nothing of use was coming up on my http://www.behold.cc search either. So, what could I do? Well, there are a couple do it yourself options.
DIY Studio Lighting
In the ShutterTalk article, "Putting Together a Budget DIY Lighting System," they show you how for about $75, you can assemble a decent on-the-cheap lighting system to help you photograph items indoors. It's something I definitely intend to assemble at some point, especially when I don't have reliable weather to make use of the cheapest lighting around: the sun.
A Solution For the Really Cheap
Sharpies
However, on this occasion, I didn't have the time or the $75 (I really need to replace my 5-year old computer). What I did have was a $15 white board that I use for my brainstorming and slide design work. A white sheet would have been better, but I'm working with what I've got.
I also had a clear day with plenty of sun. It was 10 AM, so the lighting was awfully harsh and taking the shot within two hours of sunrise or sunset would have been better, but with the winter sun as low as it is this time of the year, I thought I could get away with it.
Tools
I set up my white board on my driveway and arranged my subjects on the white board with the composition I was looking for and with the sun to my side. For those who may not know, I chose to have the sun at my side so I can get the shadows I need to give my photos a feel of some depth and not something that feels flat.
I took my shots, cleaned them up a bit in Photoshop and got myself the slide images I was looking for for a grand total of $0. If you don't count the fact that I already owned the white board, then the cost for this set up was $15 for the white board or $19 for some white sheets at Walmart.
If you use your own photography, then you can avoid appearing unoriginal. For as little as $15 or $75, you can give yourself the tools you need to help you get the shot you've been looking for.
