PowerPoint tips that are clear and to the point

Many people, myself included, have used PowerPoint to make important presentations. Did you just throw boxes on the screen or did you think about your audience and your message? I know that I am usually too overwhelmed by color and animation choices to put much thought into how each page should be designed. Stephen M. Kosslyn, chair of the Department of Psychology and John Lindsley Professor at Harvard University, has written a book to elucidate the process. In Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Creating Compelling PowerPoint Presentations, Kosslyn presents eight simple principles, based on modern science about perception, memory, and cognition, that will make any presentation work. In the original article below Kosslyn provides some tips to get you started.

• Goldilocks Rule. Don’t give people too little or too much – give them just the right amount for the message you want to convey.
  On the one hand, if you don’t include enough, you’ll just be dumping a puzzle on their laps – or, worse yet, make them annoyed at you for not being clear. On the other hand, if you give too much, you’ll make the audience work too hard. It might be tempting to show how smart, knowledgeable, and well-prepared you are by showering the audience with details. But if that information doesn’t really help you tell your story, and doesn’t help the audience understand your main points, then it just gets in the way. You will force the audience members to search for the information-bearing needle in the haystack of your words and graphics – and they will probably just give up. And they probably should, because you’ve put them in a Catch-22: People don’t like expending energy unless they know it’s worthwhile, but you’ve forced them to spend energy in order to find out whether it’s worthwhile to do so!
  

  

• Rule of Four. Don’t expect the audience to keep in mind more than four groups on a slide. Car license plates and telephone numbers are as long as they are because of how much information we can easily store in our short-term memories: on average about four groups. This means, as a general guideline, that you shouldn’t show more than four bullets, and in each bullet should comprise no more than two lines (assuming that each line has on average two phrases or concepts).
  The Rule of Four provides another reason why you should follow the Goldilocks Rule, and not provide too much. But more than that, if there is too much on a slide, the words are likely to be very small, and difficult to see. Nobody likes to risk eyestrain when viewing a presentation. And yet another reason for keeping it short and sweet is that if there is too much material on the slide, the audience will be reading one thing while you are saying another, and we are not good at such multitasking: You’ll force the audience to read or to listen to you — or to try to do both (which means that they will not do either very well).
  

  

• Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer Rule: As Rudolph knew all too well, what’s different stands out, be it a red nose, a large graphic, or words in bold.
  Make what’s important stand out by being different from the surrounds. It can be larger, bolder, or a more striking color. Or it can move in from the side. But avoid overdoing this. The human brain is a “difference detector”: we notice the red nose among a group of black noses, or the nail the sticks above the floor boards. But if all noses are red, or all nails protrude, we quickly adapt and don’t pay attention to them. So, don’t use all bold, or have every word or graphic come flying in. If you decide to have the words or graphics come flying in from different angles, you will succeed in making the audience notice them – but you’ll also annoy the audience by continually grabbing their attention as if something new and important were happening when it was really same ole, same ole. Not just boring – irritating!
  

  

• Backgrounds, salience, and compatibility
  Let's use two of the principles, salience and compatibility, to examine the single issue of slide backgrounds. The most important element of your design should also be the most salient, says Kosslyn. This could be done in many ways such as with larger or bold type, color choices, positioning, and myriad other ways that help guide the viewer's eyes. Generally, slide backgrounds should have low salience, says Kosslyn. That is, backgrounds should be simple without lots of perceptible differences among the background image itself since this would interfere with the foreground elements. And if you use a photo for your background image, Kosslyn reminds us to use a background image that underlines our message instead of undermining it. A good background, says, Kosslyn, can "...allow you to underline your message effectively, or it can create confusion, the background image should not conflict with the message of the display."

Above: These are posters I found in two store fronts at a shopping mall in Guam Sunday. The one on the left uses three colors (white, red, black), the one on the right has over twice as many colors at seven (yellow, green, blue, red, black, violet, and white). In both cases the key element is the number set in large type: 40% and 50% are what attracts the eye of the shoppers looking for a deal ("off" and "%" are made smaller because they are a step down in importance and are assumed or implied given the context). The limitations of the discount (that they are for selected items only and that you have to buy one first at full price to get the discount on the shoes, etc.) are made subordinate and may in fact be missed until the clerk informs the customer who is now all ready in the store. The power of the "40% Off" on the colorful poster for a game software shop is reduced due to weaker overall design priority of the poster, which even includes superfluous clip art, and in the end simply blends into the sea of noise.(The poster reminds me of some PowerPoint slides that have a large title competing with the more important elements in the slide). The poster for the shoe store is a good example of salience ("Attention is drawn to large perceptible difference") as it is clear which element is the most important.

• If you want to be a PowerPoint Jedi, and not a PowerPoint Sith, my advice is to start by thinking about who your audience is, what they are interested in knowing, how you can tell a story that will connect for them, and how you can show-and-tell in ways that they can grasp without straining. May the Force be with you!

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