Death By AutoContent, by Jeffrey Veen

Death By AutoContent

I recently came across an academic paper titled, The PowerPoint Presentation and Its Corollaries: How Genres Shape Communicative Action in Organizations [pdf] by JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski, both of the MIT Sloan School of Management. In it, they have a look at how the genre of PowerPoint presentations in business affects communication both inside companies and externally with their clients or customers. It's a fascinating look at how PowerPoint has, essentially, automated lazy thought. Or, to put it another way, created bullet-point expectations for all organizational knowledge.

Along the way to their thesis, though, the authors trace a brief history of business communications. I was particularly struck by this quote from Willard C. Brinton’s 1914 book Graphical Methods for Presenting Facts:

In many presentations it is not a question of saving time to the reader but a question of placing the arguments in such form that the results may surely be obtained.

Brinton was arguing 90 years ago for clarity in presentations, and reminding his readers that graphics were aides for communications, not shortcuts or diversions. It was the apex of the industrial revolution, and with it came startlingly complex business data. Charts, graphs, and illustrations were popularized as a way of translating that data into knowledge. DuPont, for example, had grown so large that the organization relied on an industry-renown chart room to keep its executives up to date.

As technology progressed and matured, the ability to control presentations began to creep in as a surrogate for communicating complex ideas with well-crafted narrative. With the advent of the overhead projector:

Presenters frequently used two techniques for revealing information gradually: covering part of the transparency with paper (a practice that audience members frequently found annoying) and sliding that paper down as needed, and using overlays to add information gradually to an image.

Already, transitions and effects were becoming ubiquitous.

Once PowerPoint hit the scene, the backlash was sudden and fierce, including parody in the form of the Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation and Click To Add Title. Microsoft parried with the "AutoContent Wizard" -- a tool that creates a deck from a series of questions -- and things spiraled down from there.

The paper does a good job of analyzing how PowerPoint presentations are being used in a variety of organizations. From internal training, to external sales pitches, to actual "deliverables" for a design firm. The authors also describe just how artificial and uninspired the output of the tool can be, especially joined with "telepresence" of remote presentation, or as a "leave behind" for someone not at the original meeting. These decks almost always cary too much detail for the event, and not enough context for later.

What is the solution to all this decorative yet spurious communication? Discipline would help. I find myself getting intellectually lazy with presentations, glossing over bits and hoping to wing it in the board room. I've started experimenting with writing out everything I want to say for every slide, then printing them in the notes with the hand outs. That allows me to almost completely move away from bullet points on the screen. Rather, I can show a well-chosen image or illustration, and talk about it, then move on. I've memorized my notes, my audience has a copy. But wow, it's hard.

Switching to Apple's Keynote software has helped, too. It's very much a first-generation tool, with rudimentary drawing tools and very simple typographic control. It amounts to nothing more than a very well designed rendering engine -- something that takes the slides I create elsewhere and shows them on screen beautifully, with a cache of gorgeous transitions and dropshadows. In essence, by ditching the cruft Microsoft has attached to PowerPoint, it does exactly what communications professionals have been proclaiming for years: Get up there and tell a good story, and get visual only when it adds something.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 29 November 2004 at 12:18 PM. It was filed under Technology.

Comments

1. On 29 November 2004 at 2:37 PM Mike D. wrote:

Am I the only person left in the world who doesn't use slides/Powerpoint/Keynote during speeches or presentations? I've always hated bullet-point presentations and my gross overexposure to them during high school and college completely turned me off from using them at all.

I find that presentations are a lot more entertaining when the speaker is speaking to me. I don't need for his/her notes to speak to me. Unless there is a graph or chart I absolutely need to show on stage, the visual aides stay completely off.

2. On 29 November 2004 at 2:43 PM Adam Shostack wrote:

On the topic of parody, I once asked the question, what if Shakespeare had used Powerpoint, and my answer is at http://www.homeport.org/~adam/hamlet.html

3. On 29 November 2004 at 2:43 PM Elaine Nelson wrote:

Which is funny, because your presentation at the 2003 Web Visions was a total inspiration for me, to use big pictures instead of bullet points. That's what I did, too, with the last presentation I had to give. I had slides (using Eric Meyer's S5), but each one was just a photo, chart, etc.

Then I had talking notes to keep me on track through the presentation, and I included the URL for notes and slides both in the last slide.

I think it went pretty well, too, although it helped that it was related to a project I'd been utterly immersed in for months. :)

4. On 29 November 2004 at 4:16 PM Adam wrote:

I'm with Davidson. Slides turn me off big time.

"Here we have ... [click slide] (awkward silence for 30 seconds) and then here we have [click slide] (silence again)"

Ugh.

5. On 29 November 2004 at 6:08 PM vanderwal wrote:

At a recent conference there were a variety of 15 minute presentations with a large variety of presentation styles. We had the full bullet point, just images, just a quote and an image, no presentation slides. I wished for simple slides for the non-slide folks as they helped keep my focus on what was being discussed. The full bullet point discussions got me in a flat-line zone on that presentation.

I have a tough time weeding out my bullet points as I tend to think in outlines. This time I had simple slides to start off, used mostly titles for the mid-points, and ended up with some dense slides. I saw attention shift when I hit the dense slides. I think this was the last dense slide presentation I give. This time I also distributed notes as well as the presentation, which helped me get over not sharing.

6. On 30 November 2004 at 8:51 AM ag wrote:

I was at the same conference, and I could have done without folks' presentations *almost* entirely.

There were one or two examples - Thomas, I'm thinking of Jack Schulze's bent maps - where visualization was critical. And, inevitably, there were a few presentations that wouldn't have interested me no matter what. But for the great majority, I almost would have preferred a direct, almost-conversational format.

Then again, it was that kind of conference.

7. On 30 November 2004 at 10:11 AM vanderwal wrote:

Adam, Jack Schulze and Timo Arnall's presenations were needed as they related to visualization that need the images to explain the concepts.

Could it be visuals are needed when they help explain what the verbal can not?

8. On 30 November 2004 at 10:22 AM veen wrote:

Thomas:

"Could it be visuals are needed when they help explain what the verbal can not?"

I certainly couldn't do my presentations without screenshots. Showing is generally better than telling in that regard.

Also, I find illustrations help people in the audience remember. "First, we talk to users. Then, we analyze the transcripts. Next, we organize what we find into an architecture." All the while a flowchart builds behind me. It's an extremely concrete way of augmenting memory. And SO much better than bullet points with "First... Second... Third..." How does that help at all?

I love using my remote control, so I can get away from the podium, step out towards the crowd, and watch the illustration build with them while I point at it and talk. It feels like we're sharing this thing together, rather than me lecturing. I love walking out into the audience and saying, "How about this?" and clicking the remote and another screenshot appears. Everyone nods. Point is driven home.

So, uh, forget everything you learned in 11th Grade speech class...

9. On 30 November 2004 at 11:18 AM Michael Bernstein wrote:

Jeffrey, you might want to take a gander at "Beyond Bullets":

http://www.beyondbullets.com/

10. On 30 November 2004 at 1:03 PM Eric wrote:

Good article, and timely for me, as I begin preparations for a new presentation to a computer users group.

Now that I'm freelancing, I have a lot more freedom to experiment in this area, but when I was doing presentations on a Fortune 50 company's nickel, there were certain, um, expectations that governed these things. Absence of bullets would not have been understood.

11. On 30 November 2004 at 1:58 PM Donna Maurer wrote:

I found another neat trick that can do what you like to do Jeff. I include slides with screen shots, pics etc and slides explaining what I want to say about the image. I 'hide' all of the slides with text, which means that I talk through the images. However, the hidden slides can be printed, so people can get value from the presentation later.

I wrote about this a while back:
http://www.maadmob.net/donna/blog/archives/000561.html

12. On 1 December 2004 at 2:56 AM ben wrote:

my general take on visuals for presentation [at the conference [that for some reason we are not naming] or otherwise] is that you need at least a clean koan/mantra per slide. This can be juxtaposed against an image that meditatively contextualizes the point.

In this was you define the pacing and structure while not going scattershot with the bullets, as it were. people love compelling images regardless, so if you can provide a twist to your concept visually, you have two rhetorical dimensions working to unfold your argument simultaneously.

13. On 1 December 2004 at 11:02 AM vanderwal wrote:

That, which was not mentioned is Design Engaged. The actual conference was not relevant to the initial point.

14. On 2 December 2004 at 8:42 PM Clay wrote:

You know, MindManager by MindJet is a great alternative to Powerpoint. I use it for everything from brainstorming and drawing out outlines for papers to in-class presentations.

15. On 6 December 2004 at 9:31 PM /michael. wrote:

I've been collecting links detailing the impact of bullet point based PowerPoint communication for a couple of years @ http://sooper.org/ (was stoked to have Tufte himself link to it recently). /michael.

16. On 6 December 2004 at 9:38 PM /michael. wrote:

Oops - http://sooper.org/misc/ppt/.

17. On 13 December 2004 at 8:29 AM Mark Simpkins wrote:

I have been thinking about this and Macromedia flash. I am writting a presentation (maybe i should just use notepad to do the presentation) that I wish I had thought off to submit to ETcon next year but wanted to look at PowerPoint and Flash in the context of Political Communications.

Thinking here about Powells 'powerpoint' presentation to the UN and also recently reading Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies where again mention is made of preparing the PowerPoint presentation to brief the President.

Then on the other hand all the Flash being used to protest the war, elections, monitor stats etc.

Not earth shaking stuff, but kinda fun. So if anyone wants me to present it let me know ;-).

mark.

18. On 15 December 2004 at 4:12 AM Aristotle wrote:

Might want to see PowerPoint Makes You Dumb [http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1040423/posts ]:
&ldquo[T]he Columbia Accident Investigation Board at NASA […] fingered another unusual culprit: PowerPoint, Microsoft's well-known ‘slideware’ program.”