Effective Communication through Visual Design: Presentations Tables and Charts. and Dashboards

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1 Effective Communication through Visual Design: Presentations Tables and Charts and Dashboards Rebecca Carr National Coordinator AAU Data Exchange Mary Harrington Director of Institutional Research and Assessment University of Mississippi The content of this handout was originally presented as part of a workshop at the 49 th Annual Forum of the Association of Institutional Research May 2009, Atlanta GA

2 Effective Communication Through Visual Design: PowerPoint AIR Forum Workshop, May 2009 Mary Harrington, University of Mississippi, (NOTE: This document provides supporting detail for the ideas and concepts covered in the PowerPoint presentation. In conformance with best practices; this document serves as the handout, in place of a copy of the presentation slides.) INTRODUCTION I suspect we have all suffered through presentations that make the phrase Death by PowerPoint ring all too true. There is strong sentiment on the part of some experts to blame the PowerPoint software. For example, Edward Tufte, a preeminent scholar in visual communications theory, says: At a minimum a presentation should do no harm. Yet PowerPoint promotes a cognitive style that disrupts and trivializes content. Since or PP slides are produced yearly, that is a lot of harm (Tufte, 2006, p.184). However, most communications experts argue that PowerPoint itself is not the culprit. Rather, it is the way we use PowerPoint. In preparation for this presentation, I read several books and articles by authorities in the field of visual, verbal, and non-verbal communication (all of which are listed in the references section of this paper). Although their advice varies in certain areas, there was almost unanimous agreement that PowerPoint can be an extremely powerful communication tool when used properly. Unfortunately, most people do not use it properly. Garr Reynolds in his book Presentation Zen (2008) remarks: Most presentations remain mind-numbingly dull, something to be endured by both presenter and audience alike. Presentations are generally ineffective, not because presenters lack intelligence or creativity but because they have learned bad habits and lack awareness and knowledge about what makes for a great presentation and what does not. (p. 87) This paper and the accompanying presentation seek to provide guidance on how we can transform our PowerPoints by abandoning the traditional bullet-point format and implementing techniques that communicate effectively, are appealing, and create meaningful learning. This paper will first summarize problems with typical PowerPoint presentations, and will then discuss three main guidelines for creating effective and engaging PowerPoint presentations. 1. Be Passionate 2. Be Precise 3. Be Prepared POWERPOINT PROBLEMS Before discussing how we might improve our PowerPoint presentations, let s look at some of the most common mistakes people make when designing a presentation. 1. Too much text. Slides, in general, should not contain complete sentences. The notable exception is a direct quote that is intended to be read aloud. When there are complete sentences on a slide, it is nearly impossible for the presenter, even the most experienced presenter, not to read it. A related issue 1

3 is putting so much text on the slide that it is difficult for the audience to read and tedious for them to look at for an extended period of time. 2. Distracting elements and backgrounds. It s tempting to use glitzy backgrounds for slides, but they can detract from the main focus of your slide. Similarly, logos on a slide are discouraged because they do not contribute to the main idea of the slide. 3. Poor choice of fonts. Many presentations use fonts that are difficult to read. In general, san serif fonts, such as Arial, Calibri and Trebuchet, are preferable for presentations. It s best not to use the default font of Times New Roman. Avoid all uppercase (the audience will feel like they are being yelled at), and use bold and italics for emphasis only. Avoid underlining because it makes letters more difficult to identify. Use color only for emphasis, not for decoration. (Please note that serif fonts are better choices for printed documents.) 4. Poor color choices. You will always be safe choosing either light on dark or dark on light. Never use a combination of green and red, because of the prevalence of red-green color-blindness, particularly in males. 5. Inappropriate use of clipart and animation. There are many websites that offer high-quality photographs that will engage your audience much more meaningfully than clipart. Be very careful with animation. If something is moving on the screen, people s eyes will be drawn to it, which means they will probably not be listening to you. Now that we are aware of the most common problems, we will look at three guidelines that can enable us to create presentations that will engage, entertain, and inform our audience. BE PASSIONATE Communication is the transfer of emotion, says Seth Godin, author and agent of change. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof, that what you re saying is true not just accurate. (Godin, 2007) He argues that when you display a slide with an evocative image, people in the audience will be intrigued about how you will tie the image into what you say. According to Godin, you can ruin a presentation with inaccurate facts or faulty logic; but you can t make it an excellent presentation without emotion. The way to make your audience care about what you re saying is to be passionate about it. There are two sides to our brain. The left side is analytical, logical and objective, while the right side is emotional, intuitive and subjective. People want to use both sides of their brain when listening to a presentation. They want to use their left side to evaluate what you re saying, and the right side to be engaged and even entertained. Left-brain (logic and analysis) were very important in the information age, but are not sufficient now that information and data are so readily available. Right-brain thinking is increasingly important now in the conceptual age. Thus our presentations need to be not only informative but provocative and inspirational. 2

4 How do you create a presentation that evokes passion? First, ask yourself two questions: 1. What s my point 2. Why does it matter? These two questions enable you focus on exactly what is critical and why your audience should care, and will serve to frame the remainder of your presentation. At this early design stage, experts advise going analog rather than digital. (Reynolds, 2008; Atkinson, 2005) I suspect the first step for many of us when preparing for a presentation is to sit down at the computer, bring up PowerPoint, and start hammering out bullet points. That is almost certain to compromise the potential passion in our presentations. We can take a lesson from most professional designers, who do much of their creative work such as brainstorming and conceptualizing on paper, rather than on a computer. A variety of analog tools, such as pen and paper, whiteboards, and sticky notes, can be used very effectively for the initial design of a presentation. Going analog enhances our ability to ensure our presentation clearly focuses on the main points we want our audience to grasp. Physically sketching ideas and graphics promotes creativity and freedom of expression, whereas sitting in front of a PowerPoint screen can actually detract from the creative process because it forces us to pay attention to the technology. When designing within PowerPoint, we risk getting caught up with finding the best graphic or the best slide design, and often must switch from normal view to slide sorter view to see the big picture. Nancy Duarte, CEO of the world s leading presentation design firm, uses sticky notes and a Sharpie pen. (Reynolds, 2008) She believes that if the idea takes more space than what can be written on a Post-It using a Sharpie, then it is too complex for a single slide. Going analog enhances our ability to tell the story, a key to creating a presentation that connects with the audience and evokes passion. Several experts recommend the use of a storyboard, which is a hand-written or hand-sketched version of your presentation in a story format (Atkinson, p. 16). Using the storyboard technique, you approach your presentation in a classic story-telling way: Act 1 sets up the story elements (i.e., setting, characters, conflict); Act 2 develops the conflict introduced in Act 1; and Act 3 presents the decision the main character must make to resolve the conflict. (Atkinson, 2005). An important component of creating passion in presentations is the use of high-quality images. Clip art, low quality photographs, and confusing or complex charts can very quickly shut down audience passion. Conversely, high-quality images can evoke powerful responses from audience members. Researchers Lidwell, Holden, and Butler (Reynolds, 2008) discovered visual images displayed for more than 30 seconds enhance learning and retention of information. Audience interest, and by default passion, is enhanced when the image dominates the screen, and the words and graphs are tertiary. The examples to the left, provided by Reynolds (2008), illustrate the point very clearly. Which one is the audience more likely to connect with and remember? 3

5 Although there are a number of internet sources which offer high-quality images, I used photos from istock.com for my PowerPoint presentation. Although I had to pay for these photos, I found them to be well worth the price, particularly because of the wide assortment of photos available and their sharpness and clarity. Fotolia.com and Shutterstock.com also offer low-cost photos. In addition, there are a number of sites which provide free images, some of which are listed below: BE PRECISE Being focused and passionate about your presentation is a good first step. However, you must also be precise about knowing how best to communicate your message. How can we be precise in our presentations? By synthesizing ideas and communicating them with a few well-chosen words, high-quality pictures, and clear graphics. This is very challenging for most of us simply because it to so much easier to use phrases or sentences, rather than to select one or two words to represent what we are saying. However, simplifying our slides by choosing precisely the correct word, striking picture, or clear graphic can be extremely effective. When creating presentations, we should keep in mind the advice of Albert Einstein who said, Everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler (Kapterev, 2006) and Leonardo da Vinci who stated, Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.(kapterev, 2006) Most PowerPoint presentations consist of slides containing several levels of bullet points, or even complete sentences. There are two basic problems with this approach. The first is that most presenters speak at a rate of 150 words per minute, but most people read at the rate of 250 words per minute (Kapterev, 2006). This means that if your slide has lots of words in the form of sentences or bullet points, the audience will be much more likely to read the slide than to listen to you. In addition, they will finish reading the slide much faster than you can verbally present it, resulting in a bored and unengaged audience. The second problem with slides containing many words is that this approach is not the most effective means for promoting learning. Richard Mayer, a researcher from Cambridge, studied how to use multimedia to promote meaningful learning. Two important findings from his research that are applicable to PowerPoint are: 1. People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. The lesson we can learn from this research is that we should use many more images in our slides, images that reinforce (not repeat) our words. However, this result does not suggest that you must have a graphic on every single slide. One or two words on a slide can function as a visual. 2. People will understand a multimedia explanation better when the words are presented orally only, instead of both verbally and on the screen. This is called the redundancy principle, and is particularly pertinent to PowerPoint presentations. The common practice in PowerPoint presentations is to summarize what we are saying in bullet point form, yet Mayer says this approach actually impedes learning. He did discover, however, there are some cases where verbal and on-screen redundancy is acceptable, for example when introducing technical terms or concepts, or if audience members are not native speakers or have hearing problems. 4

6 What a tremendous effect these findings could have on the traditional guidelines for PowerPoint that many of us follow, such as the 6x6 Rule which states that a slide should have no more than six lines of text, and no more than six words per line. Some authors say the 6x6 format results in slides that look like a first-grade reader: I see the brown dog run. Run, run, brown dog, run fast. Others say this format results in slides that are predictable and orderly, but terribly boring and not particularly effective in communicating. But wait a minute, you might say. We are institutional researchers. We have data to display. We can t use words and pictures for that! Accordingly to the research, there are three approaches to this dilemma: 1. Use a picture and a few words to highlight the main point. For example, instead of showing an Excel table with graduation rates for the past 10 years, or a line graph demonstrating the ten-year change, insert a highquality picture representing a graduate and embed a short text message such as, 5% increase in graduation rates. 2. Use a handout. Tell your audience ahead of time that you will be providing a handout at the end of your presentation with all the details discussed in your presentation. This enables the audience to listen to you and not be distracted by reading a paper copy of the slides. Many people try to let their slides function as a document, but slides and documents have two distinct purposes. In fact, a new term has evolved for this practice of combining slides and documents: slideuments. According to Garr Reynolds, a noted communication authority, with this kill two birds with one slide approach, the only thing that gets killed is effective communication. He continues, Attempting to have slides serve both as projected visuals and as stand-alone handouts makes for bad visuals and bad documentation. (Reynolds, 2008, p. 68) Conference organizers should not ask presenters for their PowerPoint slides, he says, but should instead ask presenters to prepare a detailed handout that can effectively function as a stand-alone document. 3. Create a graphic that is clear and simple. One principle to keep in mind when creating graphics is the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), a term which originated in technical fields such as radio and electronic communication. The SNR is the ratio of relevant to irrelevant information in a slide (Reynolds, p. 2008). We should strive to maximize this ratio because people have difficulty processing extraneous information. A rule of thumb when considering signal vs. noise is: if the item can be removed without degradation to the chart, then it should be removed. We should consider removing grid lines in a graph, conflicting backgrounds, and logos. The use of 3D bars is particularly in conflict with the SNR. Steven Few in Show Me The Numbers, (Few, 2004) says 3D renderings of two dimensional quantitative information rarely work. He cautions we should not sacrifice effective communication just because 3D might look attractive. Look, he says, at what happens when you add a third dimension to a series of bars in a bar chart. What is the result? Nothing more than bars that now occupy more space than they did before and are more difficult to align with a value. (Few, 2004) 5

7 This example from Reynolds (2008) illustrates the principle of signal to noise. Note in the after picture how the distracting background was removed, 3D bars and grid lines were eliminated, and a summary statement was added, resulting in a much cleaner, easier-to-read graph. Ironically, PowerPoint itself promotes graphs similar to the one on the left by defaulting to 3D, gridlines and row/column labels. A final concept dealing with precision is the Rule of Four, which states that humans can only hold four concepts in their mind at a time. (Kosslyn, 2007) Therefore, slides which contain more than four concepts will be confusing and ineffective. However, once four concepts have been introduced, you can provide up to four subpoints without breaking the Rule of Four. For example, if you are showing an organizational chart, the first slide should show no more than four boxes. However, the next slide could show one of the four original boxes, and then introduce up to four additional boxes below it. Creating presentations that are precise is not simple or intuitive. It will, however, pay dividends in terms of your audience s understanding and appreciation of your presentation. Although precision and passion are critically important, your presentation must also be well prepared to be successful. BE PREPARED In giving presentations, Steve Jobs uses simple, stunning visuals along with a conversational style that exudes passion and enthusiasm. Because it looks so easy and natural, one might think it simply comes naturally to him. However, the reason his presentations are so effective is that he practices, solicits feedback from his team, and continues to enhance and practice his presentation. Here are some techniques you should consider when preparing your presentation. The introduction to your topic should be well-orchestrated and designed to put your audience at ease. Most experts advise starting out with something light that will make your audience relax and connect to you. You might start out with a joke, a bumper sticker or a slogan, but make sure it s appropriate, applicable, and not offensive to anyone. A technique that is strongly recommended and involves almost no risk is to tell something funny about yourself. You immediately form a connection with the audience who recognizes you as a regular person who can laugh at him/herself. Then you need to start with a BANG! Find something that will get your audience s attention very early in the presentation. Research has shown that many people make up their mind about your presentation by the time you re on the second slide. (Reynolds, 2008) So it s extremely important that you start with something powerful. 6

8 It is advisable when preparing your presentation to thoughtfully and deliberately build in mental breaks. Research has shown that people can only concentrate for about minutes at a time. There are a number of ways you can insert mental breaks into your presentation. You might engage the audience in an activity, or ask them to answer a question. One technique that can be used for any presentation is to ask the audience to turn to the person next to them and take two to three minutes to share something they have learned from the presentation, or to react to a concept introduced in the presentation. This activity is especially effective because people remember things better if they talk about them. After the mental break, the audience returns to you refreshed and ready to pay attention again. Three pointers when delivering your presentation are: avoid podiums (which tend to distance you from your audience), use a wireless mouse (so you aren t tied to the keyboard), and leave the lights on during the presentation (to keep your audience engaged). Of course, a key element in being prepared is practicing your presentation. This is particularly important because if you follow the guidelines about eliminating bullet points, your slides will not necessarily cue you on what to say. Therefore, you must be much more diligent about practicing the remarks which accompany each slide. Experts suggest first practicing in front of a mirror to monitor your expression and body language, and then practicing in front of your colleagues who can provide constructive feedback. The phrase timing is everything is particularly applicable to a presentation. It s very annoying to go to a presentation at a conference and have it finish in half its scheduled time. Likewise, it s frustrating to see a presenter hurry through the last half of the slides because of time limitations. By practicing your presentation, you ll be able to adjust it to fit the allotted time. It s useful to have someone at the back of the room to alert you when you have about 15 minutes left in your presentation. Then you can adjust the pace of the remainder of the presentation. If you are running behind, never let the audience know it. Do not say things like, I m going to very quickly cover these next slides because we re out of time or I don t have time to cover the next concept but you can read the slides. If you are running out of time (which shouldn t happen if you have practiced your presentation numerous times), cover the remaining slides more briefly than intended, but do not give the appearance of being rushed. Be sure to leave at least five minutes (preferably ten) for questions at the end. CONCLUSION It is time for us as IR and IE professionals to abandon the traditional presentation format composed of bullet points and graphs. We need to be aware of and incorporate the findings from communications theory and visual design research. This transition will, indeed, be challenging. But it will be rewarding, both to us as presenters and to our audiences. There is no doubt this new approach to PowerPoint will require a huge investment of time and creative energy. However, the investment can yield rich rewards. The next time we are asked to do a presentation, let s remember to be passionate, be precise, and be prepared. Doing so will allow us to more effectively communicate our message, and in turn, better serve our institutions and our profession. 7

9 REFERENCES Altman, R. (2007) Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck and How You Can Make Them Better. Pleasanton, CA: Harvest Press Atkinson C. (2005). Beyond Bullet Points. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press. Few, S. (2004). Show Me the Numbers. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press. Godin S. (2007) Really Bad PowerPoint. Retrieved October 2, 2008 from Harrington R. & Rekdal S. (2007). How to Wow with PowerPoint. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press. Kapterev, A. (2006 ) Death by PowerPoint and How to Fight It. Retrieved September 15, 2008 from Kosslyn, S. M. (2007). Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles fo Compelling PowerPoint Presentations. New York: Oxford University Press. Mayer, R. E. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Reynolds, G. (2008). Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Satyajeet S. (2006). Designing Effective PowerPoint Presentations. Retrieved September 12, 2008 from Tufte, E. R. (2006). Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press LLC. (NOTE: If I had to recommend just two books to you from the above list, they would be Presentation Zen and Show Me the Numbers. They are both excellent resources for improving PowerPoint presentations!) 8