Schrodinger’s Cat also makes great use of Microsoft PowerPoint as a valuable adjunct to his presentations; he feels that it really gives him an edge over his fellow felines, some of whom are still labouring in the archaic world of – perish the thought – overhead projectors. However, he is only too aware of the dangers that its misuse or abuse can pose. He discusses these issues at some length in this post:
Microsoft PowerPoint has become a pervasive, well-nigh ubiquitous adjunct to many presentations in today’s corporate world. Alongside its ubiquity has developed the unfortunate syndrome of “Death by PowerPoint”, whereby the creators and/or users of PowerPoint misuse or abuse the program to the extent that, rather than enhance the presentation, it inhibits and detracts from it.
Read on, for my own personal diagnosis of “death by PowerPoint” born of long and bitter experience, and my suggestions for successfully avoiding it.
Don’t let visuals overwhelm your content
There is a widespread tendency to overuse graphic content on your slides, with the inclination being seemingly to fill any empty space with visuals of some type. But you should not be averse to leaving some empty space on your slides; in effect, to aim for a balance between your text content, visual content and at least some empty space. Always bear in mind your over-riding purpose is to emphasise and clearly convey your main message to the audience. Too much visual content, intended only to decorate and not closely tied into the main message and purpose of your presentation, can serve only to distract and provide an impediment to your audience’s appreciation of your message.
Brevity is king
Your PowerPoint slide show should only be an aid and adjunct to your presentation, rather than monopolise and overwhelm it. Ideally, the text on your slides should only be the ‘bare bones’ of your subject, or a series of focus points, and you and/or the presenter should simply seek to add flesh to those bones. In other words, the presenter should provide and maintain the focus of the presentation with the slide show providing a framework to work within. There seems to be a tendency to overload slides with text – to have the slides contain a comprehensive, complete exposition of the subject, and the presenter just reads out the slide content, in all likelihood ignoring the snores of the slumbering audience.
Instead, a good rule of thumb is to have your slides contain two no more than eight (8) lines of text; any more than that, the average audience member will not meaningfully absorb it, and you should consider creating a new slide for the surplus. Or, even better, see if you can omit this content altogether. One of the common defects in the worst presentations that I have personally witnessed is that they are just too long, both in terms of the content on individual slides, and the overall number of slides in total. My advice is that the best slide shows are concise and to-the-point. You should always aim to have the least number of slides possible. In my view it is usually better to err on the side of having too few slides, and too little content, rather than too many or too much.
You should also be aware that PowerPoint has some very useful, if underused, features that allow you to produce alternative forms of output from your PowerPoint file. Foe example, there is a Notes view, which allows you to add notes to the same page as each consecutive slide, which be printed separately as either or both a script for the presenter or a handout for the audience. The same printing options can also produce notes pages that can contain either blank lines or your own notes alongside a reproduction of the slides. These options are to be found under the Settings on the Print screen beneath the File tab in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
Punctuate your presentation with special effects or alternative forms of media i.e. social media
It is possible to attach some kind of animation or special effect to every individual element on your slides, be it a heading, bullet point, picture, icon or what have you. However, just because you can do this, certainly doesn’t mean that you should. You need to be wary about going “over-the-top” with special effects, for reasons already discussed; your audience’s attention will be consumed by all the effects, and your message might go missing in the midst of them. I find that a far better strategy is to use these effects sparingly, which serves to maximise their impact, and use them to punctuate your presentation at key points or milestones.
For example, you might be enticed by the prospect of sound effects but using them too liberally throughout your presentation is a guaranteed passport into “Death by PowerPoint” territory. Instead, try just using just a few at strategic points in your slide show. You could greet your first title slide with a drum roll on the slide transition, and similarly have your very last slide depart the screen with a round of applause. This latter example has the added benefit, if you are at all insecure about the reception that your presentation is to receive, of using the power of suggestion to generate a round of applause from your audience. (It might sound cheesy, but it works!)
Another valid suggestion would be to minimise the use of PowerPoint’s own built-in effects and instead employ alternative methods of engaging with your audience. One increasingly popular strategy is to post to social media (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) from within your presentation.
Ensure that the presenter knows how to run the presentation competently and effectively
Most people who have spent time in the audience for a typical PowerPoint slideshow have had the experience of twiddling their thumbs while the presenter fumbles their way through the navigation of their slideshow. A very common syndrome is that the slideshow might be well advanced, and an audience member might then pose a question relating to content on a much earlier slide. How does the presenter move back to that slide in a seamless, efficient way? That is, without doing the obvious, untidy thing of halting the slideshow, dropping back into program’s default Slide View, find the earlier slide in question and then laboriously re-starting the slide show at this point? One issue that I have noticed a lot over the years is that many PowerPoint users invest a great deal of their time and brainpower in creating their slide show, composing their content, adding their graphic elements, special effects and transitions. But, as a consequence, they don’t spend nearly enough (or any) time in ensuring that the person in charge of running the finished slide show actually knows how to do it. There are numerous, straightforward shortcuts that you can utilise, whereby you can navigate between slides in a non-linear fashion, switch quickly to a black or white slide, or transform your pointer into a pen to make ‘ink’ annotations during the slide show. I will publish a post in the near future which discusses these methods in detail, but for now all you need to know is one crucial keyboard shortcut, to be used when running or rehearsing the slideshow, press the F1 key. This will display a dialog box that lists all of the relevant keyboard manoeuvres:
Achieve a balance between variety and consistency
Overall, your goal in creating a successful presentation should be to find a balance between variety and consistency. You should look to employ a consistent and uniform colour scheme for the majority of your slide show and make it one which takes into account ease of readability and visibility. A good rule of thumb is to have a light-coloured background, contrasted with a darker colour for text and other visual elements. If you doubt the wisdom of this advice, consider why it is harder driving at night than it is during the day. The same issue is applicable to your presentation. With an appealing and effective colour scheme, you then have the latitude to employ a greater variety of special effects within the overall theme to add emphasis to your key points.
Finally, if possible, a wise practice can be to rehearse your presentation in the same or a similar environment to the one in which you intend to use the finished product. Putting yourself in the same shoes as your audience allows you to see whether the colour combinations and sizes of elements that you have used are appropriate. You can be deceived by creating and viewing your slideshow purely on your own personal screen, because you are not seeing it in the same way as your eventual audience.
Look for more posts soon, for more advice and ideas about PowerPoint.