Presentation Zen [33]
Designing a tight presentation which has the facts right but does so by giving simple, concrete anecdotes that touch people’s emotions is not easy work, but it’s worth it. Every successful presentation has elements of story to it. Your job is to identify the elements of your content that can be organized in a way that tells a memorable story.
In Sum
• Make your ideas sticky by keeping things simple, using examples and stories, looking for the unexpected, and tapping into people’s emotions.
• A presentation is never just about the facts.
• Brainstorm your topic away from the computer, chunk (group) the most important bits. Identify the underlying theme and be true to that theme (core message) throughout the creation of the presentation.
• Make a storyboard of your ideas on paper—and then use software to lay out a solid structure that you can see.
• Show restraint at all times and bring everything back to the core message.
Design
Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify.
—Henry David Thoreau
Chapter 5
Simplicity: Why It Matters
As our daily lives have become more complex, more and more people look to incorporate simplicity into their lives. But finding simplicity in the workplace seems harder these days, not easier. Professionally, people are terrified of being simple for fear of being labeled a lightweight. So “when in doubt, add more” is often the guiding principle.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of simplicity and what it means to be simple today. Many people confuse simple, for example, with simplistic and simplism or that which is dumbed-down to the point of being deceptive or misleading. “Simple” to some people means necessarily a kind of oversimplification of an issue, which ignores complexities and creates obfuscation and outright falsehoods. Politicians are often guilty of this type of oversimplification. But this is not the kind of simplicity I am talking about here. The kind of simplicity I am talking about does not come from a place of laziness or ignorance, rather it comes from an intelligent desire for clarity that gets to the essence of an issue, something which is not easy to do. Simplicity is not easy, in fact, it is hard.
Simplicity—along with other precepts such as restraint and naturalness—are key ideas found in Zen and the Zen arts. Arts like the tea ceremony, haiku, ikebana, and sumi-e, which can take many years, or indeed, a lifetime to master. There is nothing easy about them, although when performed by a master, they may seem beautifully simple. It is difficult to give a definition of simplicity, but when I say we need to create messages and design visuals that are simple, I am not talking about taking shortcuts, or ignoring complexities, or endorsing meaningless sound bytes and shallow content. When I use the word simple (or simplicity), I am referring to the term as being essentially synonymous with clarity, directness, subtlety, essentialness, and minimalism. Designers, such as interaction designers, for example, are constantly looking for the simplest solution to complex problems. The simple solutions are not necessarily easiest for them, but the results may end up being the “easiest” to use for the end user.
The best visuals are often ones designed with an eye toward simplicity. Yet, this says nothing about the specifics of a visual presentation. That will depend on the content and context. For example, even the best visuals used in support of a presentation for one audience on, say, quantum mechanics, may appear complicated and confusing to a different audience. Simplicity is often used as a means to greater clarity. However, simplicity can also be viewed as a consequence. A consequence, that is, of our careful efforts to craft a story and create supporting visuals that focus on our audience’s needs in a clear and meaningful