Sacred Cow #10: Web Site Addresses Are Helpful
PowerPoint's been around longer than the World Wide Web easily by a country mile. When use of the Web became popular, URLs started invading slide decks. Sometimes they were inserted so the audience could write them down later, or if the slides were abused as handouts, the thought was they could be copied into the browser. Some presenters used them to launch demos of Web sites.
The problem with putting URLs in your slides is that though the intent may be noble, the end result is the opposite of what was intended.
Take, for example, the slide deck I made over recently:
On the second slide, we have a list of URLs. The intent here is that the audience could either click on the links when they received the electronic copy after the presentation or they could copy them down (and possibly visit them) while he was talking. Instead, what we, the audience were presented was a distraction. They were a visual distraction that took our attention away from the important points, even if they were in mind-numbing bullet points. If any of us had the wherewithal to copy them down or even go to those sites on our phones or laptops, then we're even more distracted. There would be no hope at all for our paying attention to the presentation.
If the intent was for the speaker to click on those links and demonstrate the sites, then it's an invitation to disaster. Granted, there are plenty of examples where the web page launched successfully, but this practice is just inviting Murphy to make a grand entrance. Rather than clicking on a link on your slide, instead have the page already loaded in your browser. That way, the audience won't have to wait for any HTML, graphics, Flash, or any other components to load. If you lose your Internet connection, you'll at least have something to show. Another thing to consider when launching links from within your slide is that it takes time for your computer to switch to your browser, open a new window (or tab), and start the page load process. Granted, it may take only a few seconds, but that's enough time for your audience's attention to be commandeered by something else. You also want them to be focused on you, not what your computer is or is not doing.
So, what to do? Leave the URLs and links out of your slides. Instead, put them in your handouts. The purpose of your slides is to function as a visual aid, and not a detailed information resource. That's the purpose of your handout.
Top Image credit: frankfarm, used under a Creative Commons license.
Sacred Cow #3: My Slides Need To Function As Handouts
I've discussed this particular sacred cow before, but it bears repeating. All too often, meeting organizers distribute copies of the slides ahead of time. Many even consider slides an official record of what was discussed. The former competes with your presentation and the latter is just ludicrous. In either case, this is a sacred cow in need of slaying.
By handing out your slides to your audience ahead of time, you're letting them get ahead of you. During your talk, they'll know where you're going, what points your going to hit, and because they've seen and read your slides, they'll be waiting on you to catch up throughout your presentation. It can even discourage them from paying attention to you because, well, they've already read your material. If they do that, they miss out on the content that's not on the slides at all.
If your slides could stand on their own as your presentation (they can't), then there's no need for you to get up and speak to them. Since your slides aren't your presentation, providing your slides as handouts, even after your presentation, does not truly benefit the audience. You can't possibly fit all of your content on slides. However, you can all too easily put too much on them. With that said, they do need something to take away with them, right? Maybe. If they do need handouts, providing them with a document after your presentation formatted specifically for reading. You can put the necessary amount of content on this document and if you hand them out after your presentation, you can avoid competing for attention with your handouts.
Image credit: libraryman, used under a Creative Commons license.
What I’d Like To See In Slide Design In 2009
Over on the Speaking about Presenting blog, Olivia Mitchell asked what everyone else would like to see this year in slide design. I've got a really long list of things I'd like to see this year, but I'll focus on the top 3 on my list:
Less Organizational Inertia
Quite often, one of the reasons why we get battered with walls of text, riddled with bullets, beat senseless with charts and diagrams is organizational culture. It's they way it's been done for years and the bad habits have permeated the organization to the point of it being very much part of its culture. Well, organizational culture is one thing. Organizational Inertia is another. This is where the culture of PowerPoint abuse goes beyond culture and becomes either law or accepted truth.
The former can be addressed because there's opportunity to sell the organization on a better way, especially since a case can be made for the positive effect on the bottom line. The later, accepted truth, is what drives the most intransigent forms of organizational inertia. Here, you're dealing with small minds. People too closed minded and set in their ways to consider oportunities for self improvement. Why strive for self improvement when there's nothing to improve, right? "It's worked this long (meaning, people haven't actually died from it), and it's what people expect, so why change it?" I've heard that enough to make my ears bleed.
There's no easy solution and each organization requires a different approach to countering organizational inertia, but the less of it I see in 2009, the happier I will be.
Simpler Diagrams
Working in the world of IT, I probably see more than my fair share of overly complex diagrams slapped on slides. Someone starts feeling a little industrious while slapping together their barrage of bullet points to create highly detailed diagrams. Many of these are created in Visio and pasted into slides. Many others are created within PowerPoint itself. The thought that does not appear to go into these diagrams concern the very people that need to interpret them.
Text is inevitably too small. When pasting these big diagrams onto slides, quite often the diagram itself has to be shrunk to fit onto the slide. What results is text that is far too small to be read by most people. If they're sitting in the back of the room, you might as well forget it. Simplicity and information (not data) density are goals that would aid legibility. Edward Tufte's books are a great resource in this regard, especially Envisioning Information
Metaphors get lost on the audience. Quite often, visual metaphors in the diagrams, whether or not the creator realized they were creating them, don't jive with the expecations and understanding of the audience. Where I work, these kinds of slides are shown to audiences that are mixtures of technical and non-technical people. Within the group of technical people, you'll have varying degrees of expertise and specialties. Metaphors need to be kept simple and as universal as possible.
There's often just too much stuff. They're just too complex. Presenting your audience with very complex, even if just visually complex, diagrams steals their attention away from you. In The Information Design Handbook
An End To Slides As Handouts
All too often, slide decks are assembled with the intention that they also serve as handouts. Well designed slides are terrible handouts since they lack the on-slide text necessary to form an informative narrative. What the audience is left with is a presentation that is ineffective and handouts that have no value to the people they're passed on to or kept by because they still need explanation. You can never fit enough text on a slide to make them useful handouts. At the same time, you all too can easily have too much text on a slide, rendering them useless in a presentation.
There are many solutions to this approach, but one that I think helps by not only creating handouts (that are distributed after the presentation) but also helps you prepare your talk is to write out a narrative of your talk. Include the visuals. You're not going to write every last thing you're going to say. However, you'll have enough down on paper to be useful while giving yourself a chance to learn your presentation before you even start rehearsing it.
These are the top three things I'd like to see in slide design this year. Do you have any others? Have you run into the same issues I have? Feel free to comment below.
