A bit of a departure this month for The Editorial as we devote an entire edition to one subject that people feel compelled to ask me about all the time – the sticky issue of PowerPoint. There is probably no single presentation tool that sparks more controversy than the ubiquitous Microsoft PowerPoint. It has detractors and proponents in pretty much equal measure and, regardless of whether or not you like it, is used with slavish devotion by the business community.

The interesting thing is that pretty much every tip you have ever seen on PowerPoint and how to use it is nothing more than conventional wisdom. In the 20 or so years that PowerPoint has been with us there has been very little research into its effective use. But there is an ever-growing body of research and that research is telling us that most of the conventional wisdom is very wrong indeed.

So for the benefit of everyone who uses it and everyone who has had to sit through it here are the key things you need to know (backed up by research) to make PowerPoint effective.

PowerPoint… the definitive guide

First thing to understand is that we have one mind and two separate information processing channels – one for the stuff you see and one for the stuff you hear. Second thing you need to understand is we are all a bit thick and we can only pay attention to a few pieces of information in each channel. Third thing to understand is that, in actual fact, we are really thick and we need space and time to select, organize and integrate what’s important.

So… that means your PowerPoint has to use both visual and verbal forms of presentation, help people select, organize and integrate the information with what they already know and if you fill the slides with information you will make us all go in to cognitive meltdown. To help guide you here are the five principals that you should base your next PowerPoint snore fest on.

1. Signaling

Write a clear headline that explains the main idea of every slide. Do not write a title. Write it like a newspaper headline i.e. in active voice with a subject and a verb. You need to summarize the single overriding idea of the slide in clear and conversational language. For example, picking up on a recent issue in Australia: “Our Law Enforcers must be blind to race”.

2. Segmentation

Break up your story in to digestible bites in the “Slide Sorter” view. People learn better when information is presented in bite-size segments so break up information through your PowerPoint by referring back frequently to the Slide Sorter view. From this perspective, you can read the headlines you’ve written and see how your story flows. Your story should have an even pace from one slide to the next, without long pauses on any single slide.

Where your pauses are long, or you have a lot to say, then those are the signs that you need to break up that slide into more slides.

3. Modality

People understand a multimedia explanation better when the words are presented as narration rather than on-screen text. So reduce the visual overload by not treating your PowerPoint like a Word document and narrate the content instead. That way we balance the auditory and visual channels that we talked about earlier and there is less chance of overloading your audience. In other words don’t read the bloody slide and minimize the text!

4. Multimedia

It’s common to see a series of PowerPoint slides filled with bullet points and no visuals besides a logo and a colored background. There are a number of reasons we put bullets alone on a slide: they are easier to produce than graphics; they remind us of what we want to say when we speak; they provide a record that we covered the things we want to say. But no matter what reason you use bullets, text alone on a screen is simply not effective.

People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.

It’s not easy to turn your words into pictures, but the first three principles mentioned earlier can help you out: (a) writing headlines helps you clarify what you want to illustrate (b) breaking up your story into digestible bites reduces the amount of information to visualize (c) moving text off screen opens up more space on the slide for images

At the end of the day it’s good to think of PowerPoint as wallpaper – make it pretty and make it suitable for the purpose!

5. Coherence

Rigorously remove every element that does not support the main idea. When you think you’re impressing people by putting everything you know on your PowerPoint slide, you’re actually doing the opposite by shutting down their cognitive processing. And when people are sitting there bored, they’re likely not thinking positive thoughts. When it comes to PowerPoint, less is more.

(a) Cut all text on screen you are not going to narrate (b) Remove corporate logos unless you think people will forget who you are (c) Delete complex, patterned backgrounds in your PowerPoint template that have nothing to do with the content of your slide

As a general rule of thumb is if you’re not sure, cut it. You can always add it back later.

Seriously… get in touch

Hope the above is useful to you and if there is anything you are unsure about or you would like me to have a look at your PowerPoint efforts then drop me a line and say hello. Hopefully I won’t be inundated and lose the will to live! See you next month.