When Visuals Are Just Pointless
I've had to sit though some presentations recently where when it came to visuals, the presenters took cramming information in the audience's face to a whole new level. One one projector, we had the slide deck and on the other, a demo. Pretty innocuous there, outside the typical excess text and map shock-laden diagrams. What the presenter did next was simply amazing. He pulled the paper away from his easel to reveal three 14" x 11" printouts of PowerPoint slides like the one to the right.
What was amazing wasn't merely that they did this at all (that would have been bad enough). What took the cake is that he repeated this performance. He knew we couldn't read it. He said so himself. However, he still presented it to his audience as a guide to help explain the slides on projector 1 and the tasks performed on projector 2.
In a previous article, I wrote about a couple large visuals that I created that could not be read, even by myself. However, it was not meant to be read. I was after visual impact, demonstrating a large scope of effort. What he had on his easel was intended to be a reference for the audience, but in turn ended up merely a pointless distraction.
When using visuals, it goes without saying: make sure they serve a purpose. Do you need it to gain the audience's attention? Do you need it to help tell your story? Do you need it to help make a point? If it doesn't fulfill its intended purpose or if it really has no purpose, then leave it out. Time is limited. Your audience knows when you're wasting their time. If they think you're wasting their time, they'll tune you out.
My Thoughts On the MacWorld Keynote
In this post, I'm not going to focus on the products that were announced. Granted I can't wait to see the changes to Keynote beyond what was discussed, but I'm more interested at this moment in Phil Shiller's delivery of the keynote itself.
Early on in his pitch, it was clear that he was nervous. He was racing along at a fast pace and at about 6 minutes and 40 seconds into it, he turned back at the screen, not to point something out, but to gain a visual cue for himself. It's a classic example of someone whose nerves are getting the better of them. However, as time went on, it was obvious that he was starting to hit a groove and feel more comfortable up there. In the end, he seemed on his game and did as good a job as anyone could be expected to (except Steve Jobs himself, but Phil's not Steve).
One thing he did do, though, that I couldn't help but to notice every time he advanced to the next slide is he held his remote out there for all to see and made sure, unconsciously, I'm certain, that we all saw him click that remote. You can hold remotes like that more discreetly such that even if your audience knows you have a remote, they're not focusing on it and each time you move to the next slide it appears to be through the very magic you're trying to create on stage.
Yes this has got to be one of my shorter posts in this category, but not every one needs to exceed 1,000 words. 
Did you see anything else that Phil Shiller did well or could have done better?
PowerPoint 2004 vs. Keynote ’08 – Part 2
In my last post, I looked at the basic features of PowerPoint 2004 and Keynote '08. This time, I'm going to take a look at the two applications from the viewpoint of someone preparing to or actually delivering their presentation. I will also be looking at the various export options should you need to make your slide deck available after your presentation or if your delivery method needs to be a little unorthodox. (Note: I have corrected in an error in my last post. Diving into Preferences does amazing things.)
Adapting To Your Audience
If you're someone that delivers the same presentation to several audiences, you might find that you have to customize your deck, either adding or removing slides. In PowerPoint, your solution is to create a custom show. You have to choose Slide Show --> Custom Shows --> New and select the slides you want and reorder them if necessary. The functionality is quite buried and you're forced to go through quite a bit of effort just to exclude one or more slides.
Keynote provides a "skip slide" option that allows you to do just what it says: skip the slide. The slide is still in the deck. Nothing's deleted. However, when playing the slide show, you won't see the skipped slides.
Rehearsing
Rehearse in PowerPoint
Both PowerPoint and Keynote offer options for rehearsing your delivery. Both assume (correctly for most of us, I presume; myself not included) that when rehearsing, we have just one monitor. PowerPoint displays the slide, full screen, with a small (and I mean tiny) timer in the bottom right corner. It's as though you're presenting while looking at the big screen and your back's to the audience. Certainly not what you would be doing if it were real; at least I hope not.
Rehearse in Keynote
Keynote takes a different approach. Keynote displays what the presenter would see if they had their laptop in front of them while facing the audience. The benefit is clear. The closer the practice environment is to the real thing, the more comfortable and natural the presenter will be when the heat is on.
Show Time!
PowerPoint Options
When it's time to deliver our presentation, if we can have access to our laptop's screen, then it would be helpful for it to display what we need and only what we need, if anything. It should be no surprise that both PowerPoint and Keynote offer a customizable display. It should also be no surprise that both differ in their approach and their depth of customizability.
Presenting in PowerPoint
PowerPoint's customization options are very limited, allowing us to only change the playback options. There are no options for changing the appearance of what the presenter sees.
Slideshow Options in Keynote
Keynote provides more options for the presenter, providing two tabs in the preferences window: one for the slideshow and one for the presenter display. There is even an option to edit the layout of the screen that the presenter sees by dragging the various objects around in addition to adding and removing elements. You even have the option to change the timer display.
Presenter Options in Keynote
Presenting in Keynote
Recording Yourself
Audio Options in PowerPoint
Both PowerPoint and Keynote offer the option to record your speech as you step through the slides. Keynote allows you to record your audio or add a soundtrack from within the inspector. You can add your soundtrack from iTunes, which is more functional than any file system. PowerPoint has a separate dialog for recording your audio and only allows you to add a soundtrack through the "Make Movie" option in the file menu. PowerPoint doesn't offer any integration with iTunes.
Audio Options in Keynote
Exporting
Both applications allow you to export your slide deck to a wide variety of formats. What does seem clear from the options, tough is that while Microsoft's options are mostly just different means to dump output to different image formats, Apple thought about how the audience might want or need to consume the content. Below are the options:
| PowerPoint | Keynote |
|---|---|
| QuickTime Movie | |
| PDF (print dialog) | PDF* |
| JPEG* | |
| PNG* | |
| TIFF* | |
| PICT | PPT |
| GIF | Flash (can include audio) |
| BMP | iPod |
| Web Page | |
* = Keynote allows you to step through slide builds.
All in all, you'll probably find PowerPoint 2004 could still work for you if you need to use it once in a blue moon and if you already have it. However, if you use presentation slide software with any regularity or if you're choosing between PowerPoint or Keynote, save your money and use the less expensive tool that the pros apparently have good reason to use: Keynote.
PowerPoint 2004 vs. Keynote ’08
Having read in books and online how great Keynote was and how the pros use it over Keynote, how could I not spend the $70 on iWork and give it a spin? The version of PowerPoint that I have to compare Keynote to isn't the latest and "greatest," but as some may argue, with the lack of macro support in Office 2008, the older, PPC-based version may be the better of the two Microsoft offerings. Personally, all I have is 2004 and given how I can't support Microsoft's anti-competitive no-macro move, Office 2004 is what I've got. Also keep in mind that this is based on early impressions and early, limited use, so if I'm just not figuring something out and you know the answer to what I'm looking for, then please feel free to share.
Templates
So, when I'm creating a new slide deck, I'm typically not one to use built-in templates. In fact, given my long history with PowerPoint on Windows, that's the wise approach. Microsoft's templates are just atrocious, hideous, and simply not professional. For all we know, they hired a monkey to throw poo at Windows Paint. They just aren't conducive to readability. The template is the star of the (B-movie) show, not your content. What's worse is that if you did want to use one of their templates, PowerPoint sure isn't that helpful.
PowerPoint Templates
You have two ways to choose you design. One is through the formatting palette and the other is through a Finder-based dialog. The thumbnails in the palette are too small to be useful and essentially require you to choose them one at a time to really get a good idea what it's about. The dialog is even worse because you're choosing them by name, with no thumbnail or preview at all.
Keynote, on the other hand, actually has me considering using their templates (called themes), even if just the simpler ones. You're presented with usable thumbnails in an easy to navigate dialog.
Keynote Templates
The themes are also quite intelligently designed. Unlike Microsoft, Apple apparently employed real designers with a knowledge of the fundamental concepts of what makes text readable. They are also, for the most part, simple enough to not be too distracting. I took a PowerPoint slide deck I created and applied one of the built-in Keynote themes and got what instantly looked more professional even though the original design and Keynote theme were similar in concept. In Keynote, it's more polished right off the bat.
Interface
PowerPoint Interface
So, now we've got our template chosen, let's take a look at the interface.
Office 2004 is famous for straddling the line when it comes to obeying the Mac Human Interface Guidelines. On the one hand, they put the controls in a (mostly) easy to use formatting palette, yet they still give you a Windows-ish toolbar. You can close the toolbar, but you'd lose access to some functionality, such as the format painter. Truly bad interface design. With that said, it's still much more elegant than the Windows version. It's as though the Mac Business Unit at Microsoft tried to build a compliant UI, but overlords in Redmond weren't going to allow them to stray too far from the ranch.
Keynote Interface
Keynote, on the other hand, puts the toolbar, front and center, and attached to the document. Huh? Say what? Yeah. The very thing you're not supposed to do to Mac apps, Apple did. The very thing that makes no sense (attaching toolbars to documents rather than the application itself), they did. You know what? I don't like it. Yeah, they're easy to access and they're far more usable than their Windows counterparts, but I really resent losing that form of real estate. I don't think splitting duty between the menu bar and the toolbar is good interface design. The application/document relationship we have come to understand because it frankly makes sense has been turned sideways and upside down at once. With that said, you can turn the toolbar off and not lose access to any functionality. They do provide an inspector palette, which does make me feel at home, for what it's worth.
Adding slides to your deck is also different between the two. In PowerPoint, your primary interface for this is under "Add Objects" in the palette. I prefer to use a blank slide as a starting point when designing my slides, so I have to scroll down to find what I want. Even if a blank slide isn't what I'm looking for, the various designs would likely require scrolling to find what you want.
Keynote takes a different approach. When you click "New," it creates a new blank slide for you. Hey, what do you know, it creates exactly what I want by default! If you want to change the layout of the slide, click the Masters button in the toolbar and you'll get a list (no scrolling) of your options. The thumbnails you are provided in the drop-down list actually have your theme applied to them so you have a better idea what you're getting yourself into than in PowerPoint.
Going Full Bleed
One of the tricks for cross-platform builds in PowerPoint is to use your full-bleed images as individual slide backgrounds. This prevents all kinds of odd-behavior in going between PowerPoint 2003 and 2004. One of the things that PowerPoint also does is it will scale your slide and everything in it to the resolution of your screen or projector. Keynote provides the option to scale to the size of the screen as well, through the preferences. -added 12/14/2008 Keynote takes a different approach. Rather than risking the distortions and pixelations that result when rescaling graphics, you create your slides with a specific resolution. Each approach has its benefits.
PowerPoint:
- Your slides will fill up the screen no matter what you're projecting on. You don't need to think about what type of projector you're going to be using.
- Individual slide backgrounds allow your image to be free from accidental dragging.
- Almost all projectors project at 1024x768, so scaling may not be an issue.
- No distortions or pixelation of images
Pick your poison.
Design
PowerPoint Guides
One of the things that's useful when laying out graphics and images on a slide is some sort of guide that shows you the power points as defined by the rule of thirds. When turning on guides in PowerPoint, you're presented with two guide lines, which can be moved. In all my time using PowerPoint, I have yet to see a means with which you can add guide lines. It's either not there or not obvious.
Keynote Guides
Keynote, on the other hand, allows you to drag new guide lines from the rulers to your slide. In addition, the rulers just make sense. In PowerPoint, the rulers seem to be in at least the equivalent of inches. 10 "inches" across the top and 7.2 along the side. Each major mark (an inch, I guess) is divided into 8ths. Since PowerPoint (Keynote won't either) doesn't give you the thirds laid out with the guides, you've got some calculations and approximations to do. Keynote's ruler is divided into 10 major units along the top and along the side. Each major unit is divided into 10ths. Now, you tell me which is more useful?
Media
PowerPoint likes to throw you right into the clip-art folder whenever you want to add an image as a background (the PPT hack I described above). I have yet to figure out a reason for this bizarre behavior. It's extremely annoying and just obnoxious. Given the clip art included with Office, nobody should even want to use what's in that folder. Fortunately, adding an embedded image doesn't share this behavior. That's good, but it also sheds light on the inconsistent and seemingly hap-hazard user interface decisions by Microsoft.
Media
Keynote offers excellent integration with iPhoto, through a media dialog that shows you what's in your iPhoto library. Just drag and drop. You can also choose something outside of iPhoto if you wish. Unlike PowerPoint, though, you don't need to specify what kind of file it is before you do so.
Charts
If there's one universal truth, it's don't copy your charts from another program and paste them onto your slides unless there's just no way on this green earth your slide application can handle the task. If you've ever seen an Excel chart pasted into a PowerPoint, you know what I mean. Both PowerPoint and Keynote have the capability of adding charts. However, the approaches the two applications take couldn't be more different.
PowerPoint Charts
PowerPoint starts you off with a bar chart with 3 data series and 4 data points. The default chart is full of what Edward Tufte calls "chart junk." It's 3D, has unnecessary borders, rules, and values on the Y-axis. Oh, did I mention, PowerPoint launches another program for this? While working on your PowerPoint chart, you're actually working in an application named Graph. This isn't just a Office 2004 thing. Office 2003 for Windows does the same thing. PowerPoint offers a seemingly limitless palette of colors for your potentially limitless number of data series. Of course, only if you want to lose your audience while they're trying to decipher your chart, would you use that many data points.
Keynote Charts
Keynote doesn't launch a separate application to create your charts. The default chart starts you off with 2 data series and 4 data points. The starter chart is also in 2D. Big deal? Not really. However, it does seem to suggest to the user a smarter use of charts in this context. The data entry mode is through a dialog and all updates are reflected in the chart real-time, unlike in PowerPoint. Chart colors are limited to only 6 for the chart. Though limiting, if you looking to add more than 6 data series, then you need to rethink your chart. Any more than 6 will surely create visual clutter. I would even find it hard to get up to that number of unique colors. Rather than diving through dialogs for each data series like you do in PowerPoint, changing colors of individual data series is done by dragging and dropping from the chart colors dialog to the series in the chart. This is much easier and far more efficient.
Summary, for now...
As you can see, I've very impressed with Apple's presentation slide software, Keynote '08. For a relatively new entrant into the space, Apple has shown they have more than enough of what it takes to compete effectively and give presentation professionals a tool worth choosing, even as a first choice.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm fairly new to Keynote, so what I've shared thus far is based on early impressions. There's more I have yet to explore, such as video integration, export options, etc. My next article on these two applications will cover features used when presenting. These two are in a class of their own, both far more useful in actual presentation mode than their Windows-based counterparts.
Fire Them Up!
This book is going on my list of books to read next. Outside of being appropriate for me as a manager, I can see it applying to presentation delivery.
Presentation Hell
One of my areas of personal improvement of late has been in the area of improving the way I give presentations. This was spurred on by being fed up with having to endure presentations such as the one below (go to the original at pcweenies.com).
Presentation Hell
This happens all too often and it happens everywhere. Nobody wants to watch someone else read from their slides. It detracts from the presentation and conveys to the audience the sense that either the presenter doesn't really know what they're talking about or they weren't considerate enough to prepare ahead of time. Besides, if the information is going to be read word for word, the presenter might as well just give hand-outs and not bother saying a word because the spoken presentation doesn't contribute to the audience's understanding of the material.
One book I would recommend to anyone that gives presentations with slides is Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds. In this book, the author promotes keeping the slides simple, yet powerful. Slides should help reinforce what the presenter is saying and not "be the presentation," if you will. If the audience is reading the slides or putting effort into interpreting a complex chart or graph, then they're not listening to the person speaking. If the audience isn't listening, they're not paying attention to the presentation.
Making slides that are simple, yet effective isn't easy. It's far easier (and lazier) to just slap a bunch of bullet points on the slides. However, bullet points are the easiest way to kill your presentation. I'm not saying there's never any value in them. They need to be used judiciously, intelligently, and sparingly.
This is something I will be blogging about a lot more as time goes on.
