by Norman Eng
Forget the fact that this slide has too much information. What's more important here, the heading or the bullet points? In most cases, it makes more sense to:
1) remove the heading; 2) make it smaller; or
3) separate it into its own slide.
Do all these changes actually matter?
Maybe these tweaks don't mean much to you. All that time and effort for what? It's the content that matters, right?
When you present in front of industry experts, it's easier to stuff content: their knowledge is more sophisticated compared to that of novices, so presenters can afford to go heavier on information. This may explain why professors teaching advanced biochemistry, for instance, may feel that design and visual flourishes are a waste of time. Graduate level students or conference attendees don't require such visual "crutches."
Yet we're all subject to cognitive overload, novice and expert alike. All messages are still received by the primitive fight-or-flight brain. It still pays to be simple, novel, and concrete.
In the end, changing the type size from 28-point to 40-point may
not mean much on its own (although the audience member in the back of the room may appreciate it), but combined with other design principles—namely simplicity, composition, and relationships—the collective UX will improve.
It's like being nice to people. Once won't necessarily make a significant impression, but if done consistently, people will generally see you that way. In this way, design matters tremendously.
PRESENTING. How to Show Data.
Sometimes we can't escape highly detailed sets of information, such as data, charts, graphs, and complex diagrams. If you need to show this type of information in your slides, keep in mind the following three recommendations.
Recommendation #1: Only show what is necessary. Instead of including the whole table, only provide the column headings, along with the rows of information that are most applicable. If you are working with a data or a graph, make sure to eliminate any unnecessary labels. Seriously— often times, you don't even need the numbers!
Recommendation #2: Simplify where possible. This goes back to Nina's recommendation to distill information; in this case, data. Do you need to present a graph, or can you sum up with a single percentage? Do you need to present individual points of data, or can you describe trends? Taking the time to do this extra step often eliminates unnecessary information—that friction I talked about—and helps your audience home in on the most important statistic.
You can also simplify the data graphics themselves. For instance, with a pie chart, try to consolidate your data so that there are less divisions. The only slice that matters is the one you want to highlight. Don't let the others clutter your message.
If you're showing a scatter graph, consider creating one that shows just the trend line instead of each and every data point.
See the sample graph below:
This is the default created in PowerPoint when you click on line graph. But there are a few problems: the labels are really small; the lines can be distracting; the title is hard to read; and if the trend is what's important then the points on the lines aren't needed.
With the new and improved graph, we've minimized the friction by: 1) recreating and enlarging the title, legend, and vertical axis; 2) deleting the background lines; 3) thickening the graph lines; and 4) displaying select numbers for the vertical and horizontal axes.
But wait . . . do I even need the slide heading? The dates in parentheses are already indicated on the x-axis. I could just allude to the heading by saying out loud, "The trend over the last ten years indicates that online course satisfaction could be better . . ." Now I don't need the "Rating" label. And if you make one minor tweak, you don't even need the key.
With the next slide, we've minimized the "drag" on cognitive load. All that's left is what matters.
Recommendation #3: Use strategic highlights. Don't make viewers work so hard to find which part of the chart you're focusing on. Draw attention through highlighting. You can do this by darkening the surrounding areas or lightening the highlighted areas. Below are three ways.
Highlights for data you create. If you design your own chart or table, highlighting is straightforward. Select the bar, cell, or line to emphasize and highlight it with a color that stands out. Below, the Teachers bar has been converted to black.
In fact, you may not need any of the labels. It depends on the point you're making. Imagine if I said to a crowd, "Compared with other popular professions, teachers are highly regarded by the public." Then show the following slide:
The slide heading simply doesn't matter, since I've already said it out loud. Neither do the numbers and lines—they act as friction. With this slide, all the extraneous noise is stripped away.
Highlights for data you cannot modify. What if you want to use a chart or table from a book? Or an old handout? Or maybe you want to copy-and-paste an image you found online? You certainly can't manipulate such charts. If you can't (or don't want to) recreate the data, you can still draw attention to the most important parts.
Say you want to highlight the data on the fifth row, titled Online.
Step 1. Create a solid dark shape (Insert > Shapes). It will eventually cover the unnecessary part(s). For this chart, rectangles are needed to cover two areas: the section above the row you want to focus on ("Online") and the section below it.
Step 2. Make the shape slightly transparent, say 40 percent (you can do this under Format Shape).
Step 3. Drag the shape(s) and cover the unnecessary part(s) of the chart. Adjust the transparency as necessary so that readers can still see the data underneath, but muted. The uncovered part(s) will automatically stand out.
Using a spotlight. Other times, you may want to call attention to a particular area of the slide, as seen with this medical illustration:
Here, you can create two shapes: 1) a dark, semitransparent rectangle (as we did with shapes in the previous table), which covers up most of the slide; and 2) a circle that acts as the spotlight. Select both shapes (first the rectangular overlay, then the circle) using your Shift key. Then, merge both shapes and subtract the circle from the background (Format > Merge Shapes > Subtract).
For a step-by-step walk-through, search online using the phrase "How to create a spotlight effect in PowerPoint."40
All in all, one of the best things you can do to display data is to recreate a simplified version. This does involve some extra effort, but you will get far better results than copying and pasting data or graphs made in Excel or similar spreadsheet programs. In some cases, you may not even need a graph! Say you're highlighting one number—for example, the statistic that 79 percent of all online US adults use Facebook. Isn't it more interesting to just show that one figure rather than include respective statistics for Pinterest, Instagram, Weibo, and LinkedIn?
In the end, it's not about the data. It's about the meaning behind the data.
PRESENTING. A Challenge: Redesign This Mess!
Let's take a typical slide from a presentation one might see from a textbook publisher. (Generally speaking, they're awful.)
No audience will pay attention to such a dense slide. It simply overwhelms the croc brain. Best-case scenario? Students will dutifully take notes and "deal with it later."
(And they won't listen to a word you're saying while they're writing.) Slides like this make for a terrible user experience.
As a presenter, you have a couple of options:
Distill and distribute
Go back to "first principles"
Let's explore each below.
Option 1: Distill and Distribute (D&D).
There are several problems with this slide:
Too many ideas being communicated (at least seven)
The use of full (and multiple) sentences
The use of formal, academic language
The lack of visuals (or other supplements to help audience understanding)
Each of these iss
ues acts as friction to the user experience.
First, do we need to include all seven ideas here? Probably not (read: definitely not). So take out what's irrelevant and anything that can be mentioned out loud.
The bottom line: Never, ever use the wording from textbooks or handouts for your slides. They're usually academic and verbose. Always reword to make your slide audience-friendly.
Then simplify the wording—as in, make it easy enough for a middle-school child to read. That's where most adults appear to feel comfortable.41
The bottom line: Never, ever use the wording from textbooks or handouts for your slides. They're usually academic and verbose. Always reword to make your slide audience-friendly. Taking a few minutes to wordsmith existing text will help audiences "get" your slides that much quicker—and remember, those precious seconds can mean the difference between getting it and losing interest.
Here's how I plan to distill this slide:
Now to distribute the ideas. One slide will act as the section title, and the other three will communicate ideas related to realism. One idea per slide, with an appropriate visual for each.
RESOURCE ALERT: Like the graphic icons from these slides? Check out the FAQ from Chapter 6 for the best sites to download them!
PRO TIP!
Use the finger-snap test to see how quickly audiences will get your slide. Take one slide and show it to someone—a colleague, a friend, or family member. Without context, see if they get it quickly. It shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Anything more—ten seconds?—means you've failed to meet the requirements of the croc brain (i.e., being simple, clear, relevant, and/or novel) and therefore your message will be tuned out. Note: The exception is if you want audiences to spend time analyzing, say, a quote or chart.
Yet, distilling and distributing ideas across multiple slides is often not enough. Why not? Because this assumes that using slides is the best way to communicate. Remember, the purpose of presentation design is to help audiences get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.
Here, the goal—reaching point B—is to understand realism. What, then, is the best, most efficient way to learn it? Certainly not memorizing a bunch of slides!
This leads us to . . .
Option 2: Go Back to "First Principles."
When most people imagine presenting, they think about using slides. Delivering a speech. Teaching content. Right?
That's the problem. We focus too much on us and what we want to say. We don't think about them—the audience— and how they receive our information. But effective communication is, as Intel co-founder Andy Grove argued, all about how well we are understood, not how well we say things.
It's such a simple concept, but presenters aren't always thinking, Will audiences understand what I say? They're too focused on the What, not the How.
How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things but by how well we are understood. —Andy Grove, co-founder and former CEO, Intel.
This brings us back to the UX—i.e., How your audience interacts with or experiences your message. What exactly is the audience going through when seeing that dense slide on realism? Here are some of their likely thoughts:
There's too much information on this slide!
I can't read all this small type.
Let me just copy all this down first . . .
I couldn't care less about all this!
What should I eat for lunch?
I hope we can get a copy of all these slides.
The last thought is symptomatic of the real issue: there's so much going on that students need something to refer back to—or, unfortunately, that some students don't want to do any work. Maybe they don't want to miss anything important and are hoping a copy of the slides will serve as a comprehensive (i.e., "official") outline for the final exam.
Regardless, students here are tuning out. If my goal is to get them to understand realism, what would make for a good UX? Again, let's think from their perspective. If I'm defining the user experience of a student waiting for class to begin, here's what I believe are some of their thoughts:
I hope this presentation isn't boring. And I hope there's a point to learning realism. I'd love to make sense of what I read last night—the concepts are complicated, and I need it clarified and simplified. To be honest, I only skimmed the reading . . . I need the professor to help me grasp the most important stuff. Ideally, they will help me reach an "Aha!" moment. It would also be great if they would help me apply the concepts to real life or, at the very least, understand them well enough to ace the test.
Based on this internal dialogue, this student needs to actively—and deeply—process realism. This slide is screaming for meaning and/or engagement.
And now, it's clear: Our previous attempt to distribute ideas into their own slide is not enough. We need to address that inner student dialogue!
We need to abandon convention. Forget about making incremental improvements or changes to PowerPoint. That's superficial. We need to go back to basics. The fundamentals.
This is the essence of "first principles" thinking: stop thinking in terms of incremental improvements based on widely held assumptions, beliefs, and practices (in our case, using PowerPoint as a way to communicate information). Instead, we should question all of it and design solutions from scratch. Going back to the fundamentals. Only then can we think more effectively and creatively.
German automobile engineer Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz) didn't focus on ways to speed up horse-drawn carriages, the transportation norm of the eighteenth century—that would've limited him to marginal improvements to carriages. Instead, Benz went back to the underlying issue: getting people from point A to point B faster. With that in mind, he freed himself from existing constraints to design the first practical automobile.
Modern entrepreneur and business titan Elon Musk similarly applied "first principles" thinking in 2002 in order to send rockets to Mars. Conventional thinking dictated that he buy parts from aerospace manufacturers, which proved to be astronomically expensive. He needed to "boil things down to their fundamental truths, and reason up from there," as he said in a TED interview.42 What are rockets made of? Aerospace-grade aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, and carbon fiber. Would he need to go through manufacturers to get these materials? What if he bypassed the middleman, created his own company, and purchased raw materials, which were much cheaper? That's exactly what he did when he founded SpaceX.43
When you present, think about what Benz and Musk did. Ask yourself, What am I trying to accomplish? What does the audience get out of all this? Is this topic even important? How do I get the audience to that "Aha!" moment?
All of a sudden, the cosmetic changes everyone talks about—fixing fonts, colors, and the such—seem trivial.
Let's start by answering some fundamental questions.
Think about the purpose of teaching realism (or whatever topic you teach). Remember the student's internal dialogue? Why are they learning realism? Is it important to your curriculum? If not, then remove realism as a topic.
Wow . . . we have potentially killed a piece of content. Now we're a step closer to fulfilling one of our main roles as presenter: to curate information.44 No more dumping content onto slides. That's for amateurs.
However, if realism is important, then let's go back to the Why. In Chapter 2, you learned to create a one-sentence takeaway. Here is the template again:
By the end of the presentation, audiences will be able to [know or do XYZ], so that [their lives will be improved in XYZ way].
The last part answers the Why—the purpose:
By the end of the lecture, students will be able to explain how realism as a philosophy (compared to idealism) affects the current education approach, so that they can appreciate why schools today focus so much on accountability and standardized testing.
This is another reason why developing a one-sentence takeaway is important—as a reminder to you, the presenter, what the point of all th
is is. If the purpose is to "appreciate why schools today focus so much on accountability and standardized testing," then we need to talk about how realism shapes the current education approach. We're Connecting—the first C in the acronym CIA (refer back to Chapter 3).
So instead of a boring, abstract definition of realism, I start with a concrete hook:
"Class, what's more important—schools that prepare us for the workforce or schools that fulfill our intellectual potential?"
Notice I don't open with the term realism (or its counterpart idealism) by saying something like "Today we'll focus on how realism as a philosophy shaped modern education . . ." That would guarantee a negative UX. But by discussing the pros/cons of a practical, skills-based education versus one focused on developing the intellect, students will start to see relevance in their own lives. Exactly what the croc brain needs.
The best part of this opening hook? You technically don't even need a slide for this. Just ask the question out loud. If you really want a slide, the above is one option. Or if you really want to emphasize your opening, then fine, put up the question, like this:
A bit wordier, but light years ahead of the original, dense-heavy slide. Now students are involved.
Let's stop for a minute. Think about one topic you teach, whether it's related to science, business management, literature, history, nursing, or whatever.