Slide Design and Data Display
Tracy Volz, Ph.D.
Program in Writing and Communication
tmvolz@rice.edu
“Slides should
function like
billboards.”
June Ferrill, Ph.D.
Istockphoto.com
Levels Achieved Per Team
Data
Trial 1
Trial 2
Trial 3
Avg. Total Kills
248.14
301.07
333.93
Avg. Levels
Achieved
34.64
39.57
42.29
Average Total Kills
Average Levels Achieved
Trial
MMMM
1
2
3
MMMF
MMFF
MFFF
FFFF
197
282.5
240
272.33
216
29.33
37.25
34.66
37.33
32
255
356.25
334
276
195
35.33
44
43
37.66
30
365.33
357.25
320.33
305.33
273
44.33
44
42
39.66
38
Dazed, confused, bored
Istockphoto.com
PPT Design = Problem Solving
Arrangement
Visual
elements
Animation
Data
Presentation
Arrangement
Contrast
Hierarchy
White space
Istockphoto.com
Contrast





Size
Shape
Color
Shade
Proximity
Istockphoto.com
Contrast in Size
Small
Big
Contrast in Size / Color
1
4
Node
3
1
2
4
Node
3
2
Hierarchy
Enables audience to discern relationships
Istockphoto.com
Bulleted List Layout
This is a primary bullet.
This is a secondary bullet.
 This is subordinate to the bullets above it.
 This is subordinate to the bullets above it.
This is a primary bullet.
This is a secondary bullet.
Bulleted List Layout
• This is a primary bullet.
• This is a secondary bullet.
• This is subordinate to the bullets above it.
• This is subordinate to the bullets above it.
• This is a primary bullet.
• This is a secondary bullet.
White Space
Directs gaze
Istockphoto.com
New Technical Committees
• Therapeutic Systems and Technologies –
– Dorin Panescu, Refractec Inc., Irvine , CA, Chair, Cardiac
Catheter Ablation
– Jean-Yves Chapelon Ph.D., INSERM, Lyon, France, High
Intensity Focused Ultrasound for Prostate Tumor Ablation
– Rahul Mehra , Ph.D., Medtronic, Inc. Minneapolis, MN,
Cardioverter-defibrillators, Tachyarrhythmia Research
– Tim McIntyre M.S.,Manager, St. Jude Medical, St Paul, MN,
Medical Device Industry R&D and Management
– John Pearce, Ph.D., ECE Department, University of Texas,
Austin, TX, Electromagnetics and Acoustics Applied to Medical
Devices
– Kouros Azar M.D., B.S.BME, Thousand Oaks, CA,
Reconstructive Surgeon
– Reese Terry M.S., Co-founder/Board Member Cyberonics, Inc.,
Houston, TX, Neurostimulation Devices
From Cain Project
Therapeutic Systems & Technologies
Dorin Panescu, Chair
Refractec Inc., Irvine, CA
Cardiac Catheter Ablation
Jean-Yves Chapelon, Ph.D.
INSERM, Lyon, France
High Intensity Focused Ultrasound
for Prostate Tumor Ablation
John Pearce, Ph.D.
University of Texas, Austin, TX
Electromagnetics and Acoustics
Applied to Medical Devices
Rahul Mehra, Ph.D.
Medtronic, Inc. Minneapolis, MN
Cardioverter-defibrillators
Tachyarrhythmia Research
Kouros Azar, M.D., B.S.
BME, Thousand Oaks, CA
Reconstructive Surgeon
Tim McIntyre, M.S.
St. Jude Medical, St Paul, MN,
Medical Device Industry R&D
and Management
Reese Terry, M.S.
Co-founder/Board Member
Cyberonics, Houston, TX
Neurostimulation Devices
From Cain Project
Directional Hypercomplex Wavelets
for Multi-dimensional
Signal Analysis and Processing
Student
Advisor A
Advisor B
From Cain Project
Directional Hypercomplex Wavelets
for Multi-dimensional
Signal Analysis and Processing
Student, Advisor A, Advisor B
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rice University, Houston, TX
April 17, 2008
From Cain Project
Hard to Read Different Line Lengths
Alignment Aids Scanning
Visual Elements
Background
Text
Adapted from Duarte’s Slide:ology
Color
Images
Istockphoto.com
Background
 Simple
 Uncluttered
Istockphoto.com
Simple background
Maximize space for message
Background for Ambient Light
Text
Text
Istockphoto.com
Color
Coherence
High contrast
Emphasis
Culturally appropriate
Simple model of kidney function
Complex model of kidney function
Excerpt diagram of filtration unit
Avoid Low Contrast Colors
7,000
Untreated Cells
TC Treated Cells
FN Treated Cells
Cell Density (cell/cm
2
)
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
0.5
From Cain Project
1.25
Tim e (hr)
2.5
4
Avoid White on Gold / Yellow on White
Avoid Red on Blue
From Cain Project
Misguided Attempt at Emphasis
Text






Legible
Large
Succinct
Parallel
Conservative
Consistent
Istockphoto.com
Sans Serif Font Best
Good for projecting
Good for print
E
E
Sans Serif
Serif (“tail”)
Arial
Helvetica
Times New Roman
From Cain Project
San Serif Fonts
Arial
Recommendations
Bank gothic
Recommendations
Futura
Recommendations
Gill Sans MT
Recommendations
Lucinda Sans
Recommendations
Helvetica light
Recommendations
Tahoma
Recommendations
Large Fonts for Large Venues
Title
44-36 pt
 Primary bullet
 Secondary bullet
Captions and data labels
32-24 pt
20-18 pt
Informative Titles
Generic: Results
Topic-oriented: Re-computation speed-up
Informative: Reducer splitting significantly speeds up recomputation
Generic: My solution
Topic-oriented: Identify code inefficiencies
Informative: DeadSpy pinpoints code inefficiencies
Too much text
Telemedicine
Adjust spacing to chunk info
Telemedicine utilizes communication
technology in order to move medical information
rather than patients.
•
• It is being used as a tool to bridge inequalities
in access to medical care between rural and urban
areas in the U.S.
• It is most commonly used in the visuallyoriented
dermatology
Use
hanging fields
indent such as radiology
Avoidand
mixing
font types
Telemedicine: Take 2
Cut excess words
• Uses communication technology to move
medical information rather than patients
• Bridges inequalities in access to medical
care between rural and urban areas in
U.S.
Eliminate widow words
• Most common in visually-oriented fields
such as radiology and dermatology
Use parallel structure
What is telemedicine?
• Distributes medical expertise
• Transmits visual medical data
 radiology
 dermatology
• Targets populations with limited access
 rural areas
 remote areas
• Bridges inequalities
www.newsroomcisco.com
Details Matter!





Check for consistent formatting
Check grammar & spelling
Use a correct bibliography
Give credit to others
Include contact info
Images






Relevant
High quality
Cropped
Scale bar
Caption
Labels
Use Cropping and Comparisons
Label Images
Decoupled Techniques
Erdmann et. al. 1986
Prioritized Planning
Sturtevant et. al. 2006
Map Abstraction
Silver 2005
(W)HCA*
Wang et. al. 2008
Flow Annotation Replanning
Source: Ryan Luna
Kant et. al. 1986
Velocity Tuning
Spare Slides
Animation
Purpose
Effect
Direction
Idea Generation
Source: William Martin
Web 2.0: Static vs. Dynamic, example
 Start auction site to sell your textbooks
 Create a static website and make a page to sell your math textbook
 You drop your physics class, so you add your physics textbook.
 Everytime you add a textbook, you add the link to your index page so
people can look at it.
 At the end of the semester, you sell all the textbooks for classes
 Your friend liked your website and wanted to add his books there
since you had a lot of visitors.
 He was taking the same classes as you, so you created more pages for his
content.
 What if eBay used a system like this?
 For each item, they created a new page.
 Not only did they have to manually copy everything over to a new page, but
they would end up using gigabytes of data just to create product webpages.
 How can you solve this problem?
Web 2.0: Static vs. Dynamic
 Imagine you stored data in database table
called “Books”.
 You stored it in represented format, using a Book Id
field as a unique identifier for each book
 since you could not use name if there were multiples
of each book.
 You distinguished who owned book.
 Displaying any book would then take just one
dynamic page rather than 8 static pages
Web 2.0: Static vs. Dynamic
math.html
physics.html
cs1.html
cs2.html
cs1-tom.html
index.html
english.html
cs2-tom.html
engl-tom.html
Source: Sohum Misra
Web 2.0: Static vs. Dynamic
Id
Book Name
Book Owner
1
Math
Me
2
Physics
Me
3
Fundamental of Computer Graphics
Me
4
Algorithms (CLRS)
Me
5
English Study Guide
Me
6
Fundamentals of Computer Graphics
Tom
7
Algorithms (CLRS)
Tom
8
English Study Guide
Tom
Source: Sohum Misra
Three-Pronged Solution
Collect
Groundwater
Filter
Hydrocarbons
Evaporate
Water
Total Annual Cost: $2 million
14d old light grow seedlings
XTH24::GUS
XTH24::GUS
From Cain Project
Data
 Appropriate
graph / figure
 Size
 Labels
 Color
 Chart junk
Results
Time vs. Cell density
Excel’s Defaults
Yield
Bad Graphs
Results
Vague title;
double title
No separators
Border
Time vs. Cell density retained
Too many
gridlines
Thin lines
Shading
Low contrast colors
Small,
serif font
Legend
outside
No error bars
Axis label
Cell density higher in treated wells
Cell Density
(Cells/cm2)
6,000
5,000
TC treated
4,000
Fn treated
3,000
2,000
Untreated
1,000
0
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
Time (hours)
3
3.5
4
4.5
General title
Revenue
No visual cues to signal
what’s important
Region
Q1 ($M)
Q2 ($M)
Q3
Q4 ($M)
($M)
Total
Americas
-18
7
25
2
2
Australia
47
-7
26
15
17
China
16
-5
1
7
19
Europe
57
10
-3
7
13
India
57
57
-3
7
13
Too many gridlines
Adapted from Duarte’s Slide:ology
($M)
Values not centered
1st quarter most profitable: $159M
Region
Q1 ($M)
Q2 ($M)
Q3 ($M)
Q4 ($M)
Total ($M)
Americas
-18
7
25
2
2
Australia
47
-7
26
15
17
China
16
-5
1
7
19
Europe
57
10
-3
7
13
India
57
57
-3
7
13
Adapted from Duarte’s Slide:ology
PPT chart defaults
Revenue ($M)
3-D effect
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Border
retained
Too many
gridlines
Low contrast color
Americas
Too many values
on Y-axis
Australia
China
Europe
India
Too much space between bars
China generates highest
total revenue for 2010
Revenue ($M)
20
15
10
5
0
Americas
Australia
China
Europe
India
Summary






Consider function when choosing visual
Emphasize key point
Use informative headings
Apply principles of arrangement
Use effective design conventions
Make your data pop
Review Criteria








Emphasizes key point?
Informative title?
Appropriate amount of content?
Short segments of text?
Use of contrast, white space, alignment?
Legible font (size, style)?
Use of color?
Data presentation?
PPT Shortcuts










Spacebar or Click mouse - Move to next slide or next animation
Number + Enter - Goes to slide of that number (eg, 6 + Enter goes to slide
6)
B (for black) – Pauses slide show and displays a black screen. Press B
again to resume show.
W (for white) – Pauses show and displays a white screen. Press W again to
resume show.
N - Moves to next slide or next animation
P - Moves to previous slide or animation
S – Stops show. Press S again to restart the show.
Esc – Ends slide show
Tab - Go to next hyperlink in slide show
Shift + Tab - Go to previous hyperlink in slide show
References
Materials developed by Cain Project in Engineering
and Professional Communication, www.cnx.org
Duarte, Nancy. Slide:ology. O’Reilly, 2008.
Amazon.com images