Clear and to the point

With the debate about the vices and virtues of PowerPoint continuing to rage without any sign of a conclusion, I was pleased to be alerted to a new book by Stephen Kosslyn, Chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. The promise of Clear and to the point (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2007) is in its claim to '8 psychological principles for compelling PowerPoint presentations. I'm a sucker for any publication that purports to provide some sort of objective, scientific message, in the hope that this might put some issues to bed and provide a sound base for practical application. This book doesn't disappoint.

As Kosslyn says "The PowerPoint program is like the weather: Everybody likes to complain about it, but nobody does anything about it," (a complaint I articulated rather similarly with my tale of the Emperor's New Slide Show). Well, unlike the weather, you can do something about the way you use PowerPoint and here are the tips to help you on your way. The psychological principles are rather wordy, so here are my interpretations:

1. Present neither too little nor too much.
2. Build on your audience's prior knowledge.
3. Make sure the most important points stand out and that unimportant things don't.
4. Make differences clearly distinguishable.
5. Make clear what should be grouped together and what separated.
6. Where possible, make the form of an object compatible with its meaning.
7. If you vary properties, such as colour, size, font, transition, etc., do it to convey something meaningful.
8. Take account of your audience's limited capacity for remembering and processing information.

Some of these may seem too obvious to bother with, some perhaps a little obscure, but I can assure you that each of these principles is backed up by a host of practical tips, presented in clear language with plenty of examples. Like Ruth Clark's books, this one's a little dry too, but 100% rational and practical - a combination I'm happy with and one that's very likely to result in changed behaviour.

I take issue with Kosslyn on only two points:

1. He recommends reading out key text on a slide, on the basis that this employs both the visual and auditory channels. In my mind, this is the way to confusion, as both channels are being used to convey the same verbal content, but at different rates. What am I supposed to be doing, reading or listening?


2. He also recommends using the text on your slides as a prompt to remind you what to say next. I'm sure Stephen intends you to do this in moderation, but I believe the temptation to use slides as presenter notes is the primary cause of the fix we have got ourselves into with PowerPoint. I say don't use your slides as prompts, use them as visual aids and only visual aids. If you really can't remember what your visual aids are meant to represent, keep separate notes.

There's also a rather curious error in chapter 1, which is mis-titled 'An Introduction to Articulate Presentations'. Is this a canny piece of product placing by the vendor of rapid e-learning tools, or a sneak preview into Stephen's next book? Either way, let's be clear this is PowerPoint all the way.