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Visual Communication That Works! (PPT)

The document discusses the shortcomings of PowerPoint presentations, emphasizing that they often replace meaningful storytelling in presentations. It highlights the importance of visual communication and simplicity in design, illustrating how effective presentations can engage and motivate audiences. The document advocates for a blend of imagination and experience in presentation design to create impactful narratives.

Education◦Technology◦Health & Medicine◦

Visual Communication That Works! (PPT)

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“ Power corrupts.PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.” Edward Tufte
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“ Rather thansupplementing a presentation [PowerPoint] has become a substitute for it.” Edward Tufte
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REPORT Document Slideument
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Informational Factual HierarchicalCONVEYS INFORMATION report
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Words Numbers Images
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We learn betterfrom words and pictures together than from words or pictures alone.
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We are hardwiredfor understanding images. Garr Reynolds
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The image gives rise to thought. Paul Ricoeur
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from thought toimage. . . .
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from idea tostory. . .
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story Dramatic EmotiveExperience
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report story presentation
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Presentation Simplifies MotivatesEngages
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What’s yourstory?
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In the handsof an honest and humble mentor a presentation can become a story that changes people and their worlds.
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Imagining thestory Building your presentation Designing your slides
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Visual Communicationthe message the form the structure
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“ The tragedyof the world is that those who are imaginative have but slight experience, and those who are experienced have feeble imaginations. . . . The task of a university is to weld together imagination and experience.” Alfred North Whitehead
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“ Education withinert ideas is not only useless. . . . it is harmful .” Alfred North Whitehead
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Lasterday
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“ Most ideasyou can do pretty darn well with a stick in the sand.” Alan Kay
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AIDA Attention InterestDesire Action
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Apathy Interest ChaosClarity Passivity Action
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Beginning Middle End
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Beginning Middle Endsituation complication resolution
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Beginning Middle Endsituation complication resolution what is what could be the reward
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Beginning Middle Endsituation complication resolution what is what could be the reward gap Call to Adventure Call to Action
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ACTION
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Them Influence Theworld
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“ More importantto culture than social fabric is the necessity of imagination.” James Hillman
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Imagining thestory Building your presentation Designing your slides
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Topical
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Sequential
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Spatial
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Climatic
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Problem-solution Compare-contrast Cause-effectAdvantage-disadvantage
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Imagining thestory Building your presentation Designing your slides
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Simplicity Empty SpaceContrast
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Fact #1 Wedo not attend to everything we see
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Fact #2 Wesee what we expect to see
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Fact #3 Ourworking memory is extremely limited
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WYSIWYG
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WYSIWYG
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WYSIWYG
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WYGIWYS
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Simplify
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High Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR) less noise more signal =
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2007 Obesity Ratesby Country United States Germany Thailand Japan Australia 52% 41% 21% 15% 33%
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52% 41% 21%15% 33% 2007 Obesity Rates by Country Japan United States Germany Thailand Australia
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Japan 15 % Lowest Obesity Rate, 2007
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52 %
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52 % ofnew office buildings That’s 85 ‘ see-throughs’ in Washington, DC are empty.
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million $100 lostannually. . . in leases/rentals
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empty space creates meaning
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49,415 stress-related hospitalizations:Australia, 2001-2002
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94% of Americanswon’t buy a car from a bankrupt automaker.
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“ It wasmade by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.” Shaker furniture
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reboot yourself
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Simplicity Empty Space
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Contrast
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CONTRAST Flow ProximityArranging the Elements Alignment Hierarchy
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Contrast Size ShapeShade Color Proximity
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Contrast Size ShapeShade Color Proximity
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Contrast Size ShapeShade Color Proximity
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Contrast Size ShapeShade Color Proximity
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Contrast Size ShapeShade Color Proximity
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. . .. is an act of communication . . . . a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating . Garr Reynolds Design
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Design is abouthumans creating great works that help or improve the lives of other humans. Garr Reynolds
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In the handsof an honest and humble mentor a presentation can become a story that changes people and their worlds.
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Entelechy Productions (2011)
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References Reynolds, Garr(2008). PresentationZen . Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Reynolds, Garr (2010). PresentationZen Design . Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Duarte, Nancy (2008). Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly. Duarte, Nancy (2010). Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. Few, Stephen (2004). Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten. Oakland, CA: Analytics Press. Reynolds, Garr (2011). The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides . Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Tufte, Edward (2001). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. 2 nd ed. Cheshire, CT: The Graphics Press. Tufte, Edward (2003). “PowerPoint is Evil” Wired Magazine, September 2009. Whitehead, Alfred North (1929). The Aims of Education . New York: The Free Press.

Editor's Notes

#2 You’re brave to come out to a PowerPoint presentation of a Sunday morning! I’m sure you’ve heard of “Death by PowerPoint.” There are millions of victims of “cognitive asphyxiation,” a disease that strikes without warning, is debilitating, and is contagious. More often than not, the very victims of the disease perpetrate it on others—as soon as they can. This is what Edward Tufte says about PowerPoint. . . .[read]. Tufte is probably the leading expert on the visual display of quantitative information—incidentally, the title of his famous book on the subject. Edward Tufte despises PowerPoint.
#3 Here’s another quote from him [read]. . . Now why is that? There are two reasons. First, people are hard-pressed for time or they’ve procrastinated or they’re simply lazy. And PowerPoint aids and abets that way of working. It provides templates, decorations, and clip art. It does the work for you so you don’t have to think. And the second reason is many people don’t understand what a presentation is for. So Tufte is right.
#4 Many people think that if they use presentational software, like PowerPoint or Keynote, to create a report, they’ve created a presentation. But they haven’t! A document in PowerPoint is a slideument. As Nancy Duarte says. “Reports should be distributed; presentations should be presented.”
#5 So what’s in a report? Reports are informational, factual, and hierarchical. They are for conveying information. They are exhaustive, precise, and take time to examine. They are for text-heavy material and for that they do the job very well.
#6 But the three elements we’ve got to work with are words, numbers, and images. That’s all. And here we have this marvelous medium of presentation software that makes possible the visual play of all three elements—and we load it up with bullet points and line after line of text!
#7 But research shows that we learn better from words and pictures together than from either words or pictures alone. Visual and verbal data are processed in different parts of the brain—so they don’t compete with each other. [Cook, M. P. “Visual Representations in Science Education: The Influence of Prior Knowledge and Cognitive Load Theory on Instructional Design Principles.” Science Education, 90(6) 1073-1091, 2006.].
#8 Our visual systems and our brains instinctively and instantly process and act upon images. . .
#9 For visual learners the image gives rise to the thought. For others, those with a more verbal learning style. . .
#10 — the creative spark might jump from thought to image.
#11 However we learn, the goal is to move from idea to story. . .
#12 And what is a story? A story is dramatic, with rising and falling action. It’s emotive, evocative, and it creates an experience. But many people are afraid to use the power of story when they build their presentations. It takes time and energy and reflection. So they hit the default button and load the slides with bullet points.
#13 The good news is that presentations fall somewhere between a report and a story. It takes the best from each and creates a new form.
#14 It alternates between facts and storytelling. It simplifies, clarifies, interprets, and illuminates. It engages the audience and motivates it to take action. So the question is not ‘Have you stopped killing people with PowerPoint yet?” but rather, “Why not use its power to really tell your story?” And that’s what we’re going to do today.
#15 So. . . . what’s your story?
#16 This is the secret I want to share with you today. . . [read]. The alternative is that we maintain the status quo and continue killing people with PowerPoint.
#17 So let’s begin by looking at. . . Imagining the story, which involves finding your message, building your presentation (researching, outlining, and structuring), and designing your slides (composing words, numbers, and images on the slide).
#18 Another way to say this is that all visual communication has three elements: the message, the structure, and the form.
#19 Imagining the story. How important is that? Here is a quote from Alfred North Whitehead, a 20th century British philosopher, mathematician, and educator [read]. . . This is what you and I are called to do as educators. I come from a tradition and a culture in which we did not get a job but rather received a “call.” My grandfather was called to be a teacher and a college dean out on the prairies of Alberta. It was a vocation, from Latin, vocare, to call. First used in the 1500s as a spiritual calling. I like that. Even in today’s scrabbling job market we can still have a calling—and we can answer it. That’s what you folks do day in and day out—answer the call to make learning accessible for all. And that takes courage and imagination. How do you get that across to people?
#20 For Whitehead, ideas were the particles of energy that moved and shaped the world. Inert ideas were those which were merely received into the mind without being used or tested or put in new situations. So here we have a wonderful opportunity to raise ideas, throw them into new contexts, and communicate with passion, reason, and character.
#21 Children are great at this! They have rich, vibrant, uninhibited imaginations. They’re not afraid to experiment. They don’t try to edit themselves. They say what’s on their minds. This is my stepdaughter, Eden, with her mother, Joy, my wife.
#22 She’s constantly on the move, a natural-born runner. . .
#23 She was trying to remember the word for the day before today and she couldn’t quite get it. But this is what she came up with. . .
#24 It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Simple, direct, it’s a combination of two familiar words placed in a new configuration. Children aren’t afraid to just have a go at the new thing. Somewhere along the arc of education we lose that—or it gets pounded out of us. But we can find it again! How do we do that?
#25 Cast your net wide for ideas. Keep a notebook for jotting down great things people say or that you read. Then sit down and begin researching. Work from your central idea. Develop the steps toward your goal. Get coffee.
#26 Work the idea down to its simplest, clearest form.
#27 Stay analog rather than digital. Use a notepad for brainstorming and then use Post-It Notes. Its quicker and more versatile than trying to work in PowerPoint. And it’s more tactile—you can touch your ideas and move them around.
#28 Post-It notes are bright, they’re small, and they can be moved easily. Keep it simple. If you can’t get one idea on a note it’s probably too complicated. Find a wall and slap them up. . .
#29 Then begin to work in KeyNote or PowerPoint. Follow your outline and draw together the words and images.
#30 A structure that persuasive speakers often use is this: Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Grab their attention, focus the interest, create a desire for change, and provide a way to act on the desire.
#31 We try to move the audience from apathy to interest, from chaos to clarity, from passivity to action. And this is where the arc of the story can move people.
#32 All good stories — and presentations — have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
#33 A simple way to describe the structure of a story is situation, complication, and resolution. (Duarte, Resonate, 29)
#34 We describe the way things are, the way they could be, and the reward at the end of the journey (Duarte, Resonate, 29). That’s the basic structure. But there are two critical points that we also need to introduce.
#35 The first is the gap between the way things are and the way they could be. That’s the first turning point, the call to adventure, as Nancy Duarte calls it. And the second turning point comes after we’ve answered the objections, worked them through their resistance to change, showed the reasons to change, and arrive at the call to action.
#36 This is the threshold we’re asking our audience to cross at this second turning point. We ask them to take action. Why should they do this?
#37 What are the benefits to them, to the people they influence, and to the world? Does it meet their basic needs? Does it provide a feeling of security? Maybe it gives them a good return on their investment of time and energy in your message. Perhaps it will strengthen their relationships with others. Identify the reward! Years ago. . .[Summer of 72 in Coventry]
#39 Having found our story and discovered our message we begin to organize it and give it a structure. As we found with stories, there is a natural flow and organization to stories that everyone recognizes, even if they can’t always explain it.
#40 We look for patterns in a presentation, something that will let us know we’re headed to a destination.
#41 We look for a path, a way, as we listen and compare and evaluate.
#42 That’s why when we discover the heart of our story, the essential idea we want to get across, it’s important to take the time to organize the flow.
#43 So think back to Public Speaking class when your teacher gave you some common patterns to use when organizing your presentation. The most common used in presentations is the topical approach, where you cluster similar themes under a common umbrella.
#44 These structures have a flow that works well in a story format. The Chronological sequence works in a time progression, either forward or backward.
#45 A sequential approach works best for a process or a step-by-step sequence. . .
#46 The Spatial arrangement clusters elements together as they relate in physical space. . .
#48 Then there’s the climatic, which arranges elements in order of importance, usually, from least to greatest
#49 Persuasive presentations often use these four which have contrast built into them.
#50 Once you’ve generated your ideas, filtered out the best ones, focused the message, and organized the structure, its time to turn your words into pictures and design your slides.
#51 I’m going to give you three design principles that will work for any presentation. Simplicity. . . the use of empty space. . . and contrast—of all different kinds. But first some facts about perception!
#52 Our perception is selective. We don’t see everything we look at. I see a sign when I drive up to Stevenson University near Baltimore. . . . On my way to work I pass by a Motel 6 with a big LED sign with 49 on it. . . . .I thought it was the temperature until one day when I knew it was 26 degrees it finally registered with me: it wasn’t the temperature, it was the price! My brain saw the numbers and my mind filled in the rest. Sometimes we don’t see what is there but what we want to see.
#53 Our eyes are drawn to familiar patterns and shapes. And once we register that familiar shape our brains say, Right! Got that. . . On to the next thing. So we may miss a lot of detail because we’re just not looking for it. I’ll show you what I mean. . .
#54 A rose is a rose is a rose. . . isn’t it? Do you see anything else here? If you look carefully there’s an image of a dolphin worked into the whorl of the rose.
#55 Not only do we not remember what we don’t attend to, but in order to see something we have to look at it directly because we have only a limited number of receptors in our retinas. So what this means is that what we put up on the screen must be identifiable. It must aid our very limited working memory or it’s no good to us.
#56 Remember this? What you see is what you get? It referred to the graphical user interface (GUI) that made interacting with a computer screen visually intuitive.
#57 What would happen if we flipped it around? Not that way?
#58 Not that way either!
#59 That’s better! What you get is what you see. . . So whatever we can do to help our audiences really see and understand will make our messages stick.
#60 So the first design principle I want to share with you is to simplify.
#61 We’re in a visual culture that constantly showers us with images. Cutting through the clutter helps to reduce our attention deficit, raise our interest, and step up our comprehension.
#62 One way to create simplicity is through the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). The goal is to have the highest signal-to-noise ratio possible. The stronger the signal the weaker the noise; the less noise the clearer the signal. Noise is anything that detracts or distorts the signal. So cut the non-essentials from the background.
#63 Here’s a chart with all the bells and whistles—full 3-D images, a grid of numbers, shadows, reflections, a fancy piece of work. And confusing. Lots of noise, not much signal. And this is the default option. This is what Tufte is talking about: increasing the clutter without adding to our understanding.
#64 We’ve simplified it by using 2-D bars, dropping the grid, highlighting the title and bringing out the numbers. A lot more signal, a lot less noise. . . But there’s still something confusing about this slide. What is it? There’s no discernible order. It doesn’t descend from greater to lesser nor is it alphabetical by country. We try to find a pattern that makes sense and we can’t. And that introduces subtle noise into the slide.
#65 Here is more clarity, more signal, less noise. We want to highlight Japan’s low rate of obesity: why not descend from greater to lesser and bring the low rate to our attention by using color and shading to distinguish between the best and the others? High signal, lower noise. . .
#66 Finally, if we want to emphasize Japan’s advantage, we can highlight just the number and make that the transition into HOW and WHY Japan has such low obesity rates.
#67 Numbers that simply numb. There’s nothing here to draw our attention, everything is of equal value and thus nothing is of value. Edward Tufte says that a table like this has everything we need—but it doesn’t work in a slide presentation. He’s absolutely right! Tables are for examining, comparing, drawing inferences, taking the time we need. Up on a slide we can’t do any of that. So. . . .
#68 At the very least we can pop the number we want out of the background. The table becomes a visual backdrop for the number that we’re focusing on.
#69 Here’s an even better way. We create a visual that uses contrasts of size, shading, and color.
#70 And as we do so we create a story by lifting the essentials out of the clutter, reducing the noise and raising the signal. Our first general principle in action — simplify.
#71 Our second general principle is the use of empty space, also called negative space or white space. The urge to fill all the space on a slide with information may be overwhelming—but resist! Empty space in a design is not “nothing.” It’s a “something” that gives your slides elegance and power. Think of it as your conscious canvas for the imagination. The main problem with PowerPoint is that the default templates make it easy to produce death-dealing slides. Don’t use them! Just begin with a blank slide. All we’ve got, after all, are words, numbers, and images. Three elements arranged creatively on a blank canvas.
#73 An example of the use of white space and contrast through color. This fact is taken from Harper’s Index, Harpers Magazine. February, 2009, 13.
#76 So with two general principles in mind—simplicity and the use of empty space, let’s turn to our last one—contrast.
#77 Drawing contrasts is one of the most effective design principles we can use. We notice contrasts even when we miss details or see patterns that aren’t there.
#78 These are the major elements in slide composition and design. We’re focusing on contrast today. Contrast simply means difference. And we notice differences, even the smallest ones. Contrast is one of the most powerful design elements because almost anything can be contrasted with something else.
#79 So . . . here are some of the ways we can draw contrast in our slides.
#84 And another using color, size, and shade.
#85 Here’s an example of contrast using size and shade.
#86 When you build your next presentation imagine yourself moving from a wide shot of all your ideas. . . .
#87 and then in for the closeup as you find your big idea. . .
#88 Or you can move from the forest. . .
#89 to the tree. . . .
#90 to the leaf.
#91 This the Big Idea I want you to carry with you today [read]. This is your canvas! What will you paint today? Thank you very much. . .

Visual Communication That Works! (PPT)

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Visual Communication That Works! (PPT)

Editor's Notes