Presentation Zen [42]
These are the words of Tom Grimes, Kansas State University Journalism professor, speaking about his research on the influence of on-screen clutter on understanding or retention. He’s actually talking about the overpowering visual clutter found in TV newscasts, yet his advice is good for our live multimedia presentations as well. Over the past several years, many TV news broadcasts have substituted “pizzazz” and “sizzle”—not to mention conjecture, speculation, and sensationalism—for clean, clear messages. Perhaps the visual clutter found in most TV news broadcasts has spilled over into the corporate slide templates. One thing is for certain: if you want people to hear and understand your visual message, the answer is not to add more clutter but to remove it all.
A Word About Bullet Points
The “traditional way” of doing presentations with slides full of bulleted lists has been going on for so long it is in a sense part of corporate culture. It is simply “the way things are done.” Here in Japan, for example, young employees entering the company will be taught, at some point, that when they do presentations with slideware they should put a minimum amount of text in each slide. This sounds like good advice, right? But, a “minimum” means something like six–seven lines of abbreviated text and figures and several complete sentences. The idea of having one or two words (or—gasp!—no words) would be a sign of someone who did not do their homework. A series of text-filled slides with plenty of charts or tables shows that you are a “serious employee.” Never mind that the audience can’t really see the detail in the slides well (or that the executive board does not really understand your charts). If it looks complicated it must be “good.”
I have a shelf full of presentation books in English and Japanese. All of them say “use a minimum of text.” Most of them define “minimum” as being anywhere from five to eight lines of bullet points. The “1-7-7 Rule” is advice often given to presenters (proof that conventional wisdom is out of sync). Here’s the rub: no one can do a good presentation with slide after slide of bullet points. No one. Bullet points work well when used sparingly in documents to help readers scan content or to summarize key points and so on. But bullet points are usually not effective in a live talk.
The 1-7-7 rule: What is it?
Have only one main point per slide
Insert only seven lines of text maximum
Use only seven words per line maximum
The question is though: does this work?
Is this method really good advice?
Is this really an appropriate, effective “visual”?
This slide has just seven bullet points!
How Many Bullets Points per Slide?
A good general guideline is to use bullet points only very rarely and only after you have considered other options for displaying the information in a way that best supports your point visually. Do not let the default bulleted lists of the software template dictate your decision. Sometimes bullet points may be the best choice. For example, if you are summarizing key specifications of a new product or reviewing the steps in a process, a clear bulleted list may be appropriate depending on your content, objectives, and audience. People will tire quickly, however, if several slides of bulleted lists are shown one after another, so use them with caution. I am not suggesting that you completely abandon the idea of using bullet points in multimedia presentations, but use of bullet points in slides should be a rare exception.
The slide above was my first attempt to summarize the key points from Dan Pink’s book A Whole New Mind in one slide.
The second slide (above) uses about half the text to summarize the key points in a more engaging, visual way.
Picture Superiority Effect
The picture superiority effect says that pictures are remembered better than words, especially when people are casually exposed to the information and the exposure is for a very limited time. When information recall is measured just after exposure to a series of pictures or