Better to let them read if you have terrible visual aids

Some research done in Germany suggests a new holy trinity for users of PowerPoint.  Here it is-

1. That a presentation with poor visuals -whatever the ‘religion’ (Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Prezi)- is better read by the audience, than talked over by the presenter. Yup.
2. Audiences retain more in a bad show with silence from the person at the front of the room, than being interrupted in their reading by the guy or girl in the suit.
3. But if you think that removing the visuals is a good idea, then wait a while. Because that may be better than the first option but it’s worse for the audience than the best way, which is simple, clear visuals, supported by the spoken word. See here for a bit more on why.

In earlier posts I’ve discussed the current vogue for ‘naked’ presenting. It’s driven by 2 pieces of poor logic-

• That PowerPoint is bad.
• That people prefer presentations without it.

PowerPoint is bad for presenters in the same way that chocolate cake is bad for dieters.  Only if the lovely thing is misused, or overdone, does it become ‘bad’, and then it’s the user we should work on, not the item used.

Then there’s the point about audiences preferring ‘naked’ presenters.  Again it’s probably true where the visuals are terrible, and add nothing to the speech, but untrue in every other case, and here’s the data, and the reasoning to prove it.  Quoted from Mike Taylor’s elegantly simple blog- Why You Need Concise Powerpoint Slides « peer-reviewed by my neurons. His evidence comes from a piece of research by Christof Wecker at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. Wecker has found-

1) The retention of oral information is lower with poor (complex) visuals than with no visuals,

2) in presentations with poor visuals, the retention of oral information was lower than the retention of information on the slides, and

3) the suppression of oral information disappears when good (concise) visuals are used instead of poor ones.

The lesson is that if your slides aren’t good, concise and clear, you’d better put everything important on them, because the audience will just ignore you as a distraction, and read the words for themselves. So to paraphrase- the holy trinity of PowerPoint usage is-

1. If your slides are rubbish and you talk over them you’re harming the audience.
2. If your slides are rubbish, best to shut up and answer questions as they come up.
3. If your slides are good, say as little as you can in support of the visuals and you’ll be great.

For more on how to create great slides click here. To subscribe for regular emails and updates click here. Cheers and happy presenting not unhappy supervised reading.

Related posts:

1. Why not go naked? Drop your PowerPoint pants? Are you mad?
2. Think carefully before you use PowerPoint animations and transition effects. It’s like putting an earring on a newborn baby
3. Using images in PowerPoint for maximum visual impact

Here it is.  In all of the detail about slide design, visual and verbal channels, psychology, and blah, blah, blah; I’ve finally found the image that cuts through all the crap.  This is how every one of us should use PowerPoint-

You’ve got an audience who are interested.  You’ve got some complex terrain to get over to get to the destination, and they need to see the journey.  They don’t need lots of words.  Just a simple image, the chance to ask questions and the point to be shown to them.  No need to overcomplicate it is there?

For more on using visual aids to best effect, see here. To subscribe for regular updates and interesting stuff- click here.

Related posts:

1. Keep It Simple- it’s the ultimate sophistication
2. Making the picture fit in PowerPoint – when nearly is not quite good enough
3. Think carefully before you use PowerPoint animations and transition effects. It’s like putting an earring on a newborn baby

In developing our skills as presenters, it’s important to understand that we are using 2 ‘channels’ of information in our attempts to make the points we want to make-

1. The visual elements of our presentation- which tend to dominate our audience’s perception of the moment, and
2. The verbal elements to support to the visual impressions we make.

• HEAR a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it.
• Add a picture (ie. SEE a piece of information) and you’ll remember 65% of it.

Or rather more visually-

While I’d argue with the precision of the numbers, I agree with the general point it makes. The visual and verbal working in harmony can make your points unforgettable.

How much of your presentation do you want your audience to remember? 10% or 65%?

Visual Aids.  That’s the point really.

Related posts:

1. Great quotations make stuff interesting and help people to remember your key points
2. Size matters – your audience needs to be able to see your presentation at the very least.
3. Simplify your Data – which type of presentation chart to use and when

I get a bit frustrated with the ‘PowerPoint is evil’ brigade. They’re out in force on the internet, and they have their right to a point of view. But I just think they’re wrong. PowerPoint, Prezi, Articulate or whatever, are evil or good in precise proportion to the person using them.

The ‘go naked’ idea seems to be gaining popularity though, and if you want to go naked, go ahead. Just remember that you’d better be very impressive ‘sans pants’ in every way, because 10,000 years of storytelling suggests that the audience prefers pictures, so long as they can see them and they support the story.

In earlier posts here and here, we talked about the important role of the visual elements of your presentation.  Those visuals include-

1. You the speaker, your appearance and the setting for the speech.
2. Your visual aids, whatever they are.

It’s worth remembering that all the visual bits tend to dominate the message that the audience receives and there’s a subtle difference to presenting with or without pictures that’s worth exploring.

Without visuals, the audience will listen to your words and message intently and find the emphasis in the vocal delivery. Imagine the person who starts his speech with the words- ‘This session is about finding new solutions for the problems that face us today…’ and in the background there’s the same old PowerPoint slide that you’ve seen before with a quote from some Roman General you’ve never heard of, and a picture of a duck hitting itself in the face with a hammer.

Confused? Of course you are, because a punchy first line about hope and creativity has been contradicted by a cliched piece of clipart and a hackneyed, bullet pointed slide.

So if visuals really don’t help the speaker, why not get rid altogether?  That’s what the ‘presentation nudists’ suggest. You could, of course, do just that. It’s always an option, and sometimes the right option, but not usually. Because when the visual and the verbal work together you can make a real impression, even with the most complex subjects. That’s why art, film, illustration and drama is so popular, naturally. So where does that leave us? With 2 approaches to presentations, we should remember that-

1. Without any visual element other than the speaker, the audience will listen to the words and watch the speaker intently for emphasis and importance. So you’d better be really good.
2. With visuals the audience will look for the message first in the visuals and emphasis in the vocal ‘commentary’. They will notice inconsistencies at very subtle levels of detail. And if you can pull that off it’ll always be better than option 1.

I choose to work with a visual element almost every time that I speak, because the ‘upside’ of getting it right, is much more appealing than that of chat alone, so I like to think of the pictures and PowerPoint stuff that I show as emphatic tools rather than the story itself. I try to make sure that the words and the pictures work in harmony.

Poor visuals, that contradict my spoken message mean I have to work harder to connect with the audience, and that they listen in spite of, rather than because of the messages that their eyes receive. So even though I’m pretty confident naked, I’m capable of so much more with my clothes on.

For more on the visual and verbal dexterity see here, and read Beyond Bullet Points.  Buy it here.

No related posts.

In an earlier post, here, I talked about the importance of visual and verbals ‘channels’ for speakers, and suggested that the visual leads our audiences’ response to us, and the verbal only really confirms or denies the impression that we and our images make.

Data slides are important because they are most often used as evidence to support our thesis aren’t they?  They’re the proof of the pudding.  Last year’s sales, next year’s forecast, market testing and the like; so it’s really important that we use them well and that the visual representation of that data is simple, powerful and clear. If we mess up the evidence, the prisoner goes free.

Don’t be guilty of putting too much information in your on-screen charts.  There are many different graph types to choose from but which design to use and when?  The important point to remember is to decide first what point you want to make and then

MAKE IT AS CLEAR AS POSSIBLE.

Try Stephen Few of Perceptual Edge’s Graph Design I.Q. Test which very neatly illustrates it.

It will only take a minute but will help you see quite clearly how one design is better than another, depending on the message you are trying to convey.

As a rule of thumb:

For more of Rosie’s hints and tips see here.

Related posts:

1. Size matters – your audience needs to be able to see your presentation at the very least.
2. If your presentation looks like crap, guess what? Sort out your terrible PowerPoint slides
3. What is presentation ‘clutter’?

As presenters we are always communicating with our audience over 2 separate ‘wavelengths’ when we’re on stage. What we say and what we show.

If we don’t use actual visual aids, the same is still true, but the visual cues are, of course, provided by our setting, our clothes, our image, facial expressions and all that type of ‘invisible’ visible stuff.

It’s worth remembering

1. That the visual ‘channel’ is the one that the audience reacts to first; look at the picture and notice what you believe.  The picture or the words.
2. The verbal channel (the words we say and the way that we say them) can only really do one of 2 things-  Emphasise the point that the rest of our effort is making, or contradict it in some way. Notice in the same example that you just ignore the text when you see that it contradicts the image.

So when people ignore the quality of the visuals in their preparation, or put up with the ones they’ve always used, they are simply contradicting all of the good things that they want to say, before they even say them. Try to be honest with yourself in assessing your materials.

If it looks dull, confused, tired, old-fashioned or simply shit.  It is.  For the basics of good slide design in PowerPoint, Prezi or pen and ink, see here for some of our chief designer’s hints and tips.

Related posts:

1. Size matters – your audience needs to be able to see your presentation at the very least.

Rosie is our chief designer.  She’s the talent behind the slides and materials that we use in our work.  For examples of her great stuff see here.  Like many creative types, when sober, Rosie is shy; so you won’t ever see her face, but click here for her many design tips and articles for new and experienced users of PowerPoint.

• The holy trinity of PowerPoint use - some facts
• How to use PowerPoint brilliantly in one simple image
• Think Visually. Make people remember your presentation.
• Simplify your Data - which type of presentation chart to use and when
• If your presentation looks like crap, guess what? Sort out your terrible PowerPoint slides

Related posts:

1. Using images in PowerPoint for maximum visual impact

In a previous post here I talked about slides as a personal brand extension, and here’s a little more on what your slides suggest about you as you speak with them.  If you’ve got a beautiful thing, you don’t need to do much to make it stand out.  You can’t ‘guild the lily’, you shouldn’t put a bling earring on a baby, and a dog is never improved by a leather coat. It’s already got one, hasn’t it?  Yes, these are matters of taste, and taste is a very personal thing, but there are some things you should just know.

For PowerPoint, all you need to know is that a beautiful slide is seldom improved by special effects. Bullet points screeching across the screen or key messages exploding before you like fireworks are all very well when you’re still at school and having to prove to your teacher that you really do know what all the different buttons in Powerpoint actually do; but when you grow up and want to be taken seriously in the real world,  think carefully.

Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you HAVE to do it.  They really can be quite annoying and distracting but of course used wisely can be a good thing and even enhance your presentation.

My advice would be to limit them to just three options: APPEAR, FADE or WIPE (which is particularly effective when revealing arrows and bar charts). And don’t use them on every slide.  It’s too predictable and your audience will soon become bored, distracted (or worse).

For more of my PowerPoint Design tips, see here.

Related posts:

1. Making the picture fit in PowerPoint – when nearly is not quite good enough
2. Using images in PowerPoint for maximum visual impact
3. Why some fonts work better than others in PowerPoint design?

We’ve already written about the power of images in your PowerPoint slides but as in all things, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right. This is where the design element comes in.

If the image is so small you can hardly see it, what’s the point? Does that mean we want to stretch it to make it fit? Not if it means that you-

1. lose the resolution of the image and it ends up all pixelated
2. don’t keep the proportions constant. In other words you stretch the image unevenly in the horizontal or vertical direction and you end up with images straight from the Hall of Mirrors at the fairground i.e. figures either too tall and skinny or short and squat.

You can leave a border (frame) around the image but try to make it harmonious with the image and not a distraction. Choose the colour carefully.

Where possible an image that bleeds off the sides of the slide – the image is the slide – has by far the most impact. But it doesn’t have to be a full bleed. Here’s a very short video from Powerpoint’s MVP (Most Valued Professional) Ellen Finkelstein showing the 3-side rule (where the image bleeds off on 3 sides only) and how effective it is.

Ellen has her own blog on presentation design. She is the most useful Powerpoint help desk and is never short on top tips and ideas to simplify and improve your presentations. It is well worth checking out.

For more of my thoughts on great PowerPoint slides, click here.

Related posts:

1. Making the picture fit in PowerPoint – when nearly is not quite good enough
2. Creating great visual aids
3. 10 things to help you use visual aids well

Further to my previous posts on the irrelevance of passion for most corporate speakers, here’s a man who is on the very edge of insanity (Where passion without empathy, balance and distance, leads).  The speaker seems so full of emotion- anger and indignation mostly- that it’s affecting his ability to think, speak and connect with the unseen audience.

What do you imagine it was like to be sat in this audience, covered in spit fleck, being lambasted by this guy?  And what was he trying to achieve?  Do you think he made the point that he wanted to make?

It’s fabulous piece of video -

I got the piece from a post by Tony Coll, speechwriter, maker and trainer. See his blog for more good stuff.

Related posts:

1. Passion. Is that all you've got?