What’s the Point of PowerPoint?
“Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But it’s not.
Countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft
wants them to, instead of the right way.”
Seth Godin, Marketing expert
“There is no question that PowerPoint has been at least a part of the problem because it
has affected a generation. It should have come with a warning label and a good set of
design instructions back in the ’90s. But it is also a copout to blame PowerPoint — it’s
just software, not a method.”
Garr Reynolds, Presentation expert
“PowerPoint doesn’t kill meetings. People kill meetings. But using PowerPoint is like
having a loaded AK-47 on the table: You can do very bad things with it.”
Peter Norvig, Google Director of Research
A few years back, after the Columbia Space Shuttle crash, NASA
commissioned an independent review of their processes to try to figure out
what went wrong. The commission came back with a number of
recommendations, dealing with everything from astronaut training to
materials suitable for the crafts. One of the most surprising findings though
was that the use of Powerpoint may have negatively impacted the way
NASA scientists thought about design. As the report detailed, Powerpoint
gives a false sense of cause and effect – because one slide follows after the
next it is assumed that they are related. While in a paper or lecture, the
presenter would have to explicitly make a transition, in Powerpoints don’t
require the same level of organization.
So, Powerpoint can kill. It can also bore to tears and frustrate. The
following guide will hopefully help you make your IGNITE presentation
take over rather than go down in flames.
Powerpoint Slides Should…
• Emphasize crucial points from your spoken presentation
• Amplify key ideas or details
• Create an emotional reaction in the audience
• Where appropriate, create irony for effect
• Provide context
• Be visually engaging
• Be stylistically consistent
• Be concise
• Add something new and surprising
Powerpoint Slides Should Not…
• Simply repeat what you are saying up on the screen
• Distract from your spoken presentation
• Have too much text
• Have grammatical/spelling errors blown up big for everyone to
see
• Be unrelated to what you are speaking about
• Include stuff that is obvious
Let’s say I was discussing the historical context of Albert Camus’s The
Stranger. This is what I was planning on saying accompanied by a bad slide
and a good slide. See if you can figure out which of the two slides is best
and what each slide is doing or not doing:
Slide One: Albert Camus’s novel was published in 1942 and was certainly
influenced by the onset of World War II. Camus was an outspoken pacifist
and was extremely critical of the Algerian government who threw him out.
SLIDE ONE A
SLIDE ONE B
“There are causes worth dying for,
but none worth killing for.”
― Albert Camus
During the war, Camus published a number of
works which have become associated with his
doctrine of the absurd: his idea it is impossible to
make rational sense of one's experience, and
human life is made meaningless by mortality.
PACIFIST (N): opposition to war and violence.
Slide two: So, Camus found himself in Paris in 1940, just as the Germans
began their occupation there. He was disgusted by what he saw there. One
of his best friends the French journalist, Gabriel Peri, was executed in the
street by German Soldiers.
SLIDE TWO A
•
•
•
•
Camus moved to Paris in
1940
German Occupation: 19401944
Best Friend Gabriel Peri was
executed in the street by
German Soldiers
Camus disgusted by what he
saw there.
SLIDE TWO B
German Occupation of Paris, 19401944
How about if I was writing about a specific literary element from a work of
literature?
Slide one: the narrative perspective in Lord of the Flies, primarily third
person objective, is interesting because it maintains a critical distance from
the characters: it’s almost as if we are anthropologists studying the boys
from afar. We are rarely given access to their thoughts…
…except when we enter into Simon’s head and Ralph’s head toward the end
of the novel. This is interesting because it suggests that these two characters,
who are both aware of human being’s ability to be cruel, are the most
thinking characters in the book.