The very same day after we discussed Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint", I was subjected to a PowerPoint presentation in which the student committed many of the mistakes this comedian points out in the video "How NOT to use powerpoint". It was rather difficult to not laugh, and indeed I had trouble focusing on the message because all I could think about was how bad the presentation was. I distinctly remember my professor telling us that having visual presentations wasn't necessary, but that they wouldn't hurt to help the audience understand our topics. That, my classmates, was a horribly mean lie.
Here is a summarized list of what is covered in the video, along with some choice quotes:
1. Putting everything a presenter wants to say on a slide, then reading off the slide
2. Not runing spell check... then attemting to read of of the slid
3.
- Excessive
- bullet
- points
- "...Term bullet point comes from people firing guns at annoying presenters"
5. Too many slides
6. Too much data/too fancy of graphs
-"You can improve effectiveness by adding some shading and some 3D effects"
7. Too much animation
8. Stupid font choice (Thankfully, blogger.com saves it's users from this blunder)
Now let's look at a few things that Tufte has to say:
For mistake 3: Use of bullet points often clouds topic or key point - Almost always BAD (16)
Mistake 4: While Tufte doesn't say anything specific about color, the "standard ready-made" template shown on page 18... Yeah. - BAD
Mistake 6: 3-D effects for graphs, in one word - BAD (21)
As to mistake 7: Animated transitions and things liked the "dreaded slow-reveal" - BAD (6)
Faith in humanity cannot be completely lost when there are people in the world who are able to recognize the horrible blunders of PowerPoint usage like the comedian in the video, and we must thank him for posting his message on Youtube.com. He presents the mistakes so clearly (ironically using PowerPoint to do so) that the issues become instantly obvious and everyone can admit to having committed at least one at some point, but we really shouldn't need a comedian to point out these problems!
In conclusion, don't use PowerPoint because it "can just suck the life out of you".
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