The PowerPoint Collection

A collection of blogposts about PowerPoint.

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Corrupting Evidence (Feb 2005) 

Edward Tufte is writing a book called Beautiful Evidence, about the proper and improper use of modern rhetorical media, such as PowerPoint.

What Exactly is PowerPoint For? (March 2006)

Microsoft is making concerted efforts to improve their own use of PowerPoint, and to encourage others to use it better. Bill Gates spoke without slides in his keynote speech at Mix06.

Beyond Bullet Points (May 2006)

Some of my friends at Microsoft are excited about Cliff Atkinson and his "new" presentation style, based on the work of psychology professor Richard E. Mayer.

Who's the Dick in the Wine Bar (May 2006)

If you are accustomed to traditional PowerPoint, beware. You may find these videos disturbing.

PowerPoint Slides (Nov 2006)

It is not Microsoft's fault if the Pentagon makes inappropriate use of the available tools. Loads of stupid documents have been written in Word, and loads of bad accounts produced in Excel. But it is PowerPoint gets most of the criticism.

Blame PowerPoint (Oct 2009)

If different groups or communities use PowerPoint differently, there may be many different PowerPoints-in-use corresponding to a single PowerPoint-as-built.

Visualizing Complexity (April 2010)

Lot of people have been mocking a diagram that attempts to visualize the complexity of the situation in Afghanistan using system dynamics, rendered as a PowerPoint slide. (Many people have chosen to blame PowerPoint for the complexity of this diagram.) See also Understanding Complexity (July 2010)

Visual Cliché in Architectural Discourse (Nov 2010)

The visual language of architectural discourse, from enterprise to software, is surprisingly weak. Many diagrams look as if they may have started as meaningful sentences, but they have been transformed into diagrams by discarding most of the words and putting the remaining words into coloured shapes, arranged artistically on the slide.

Blame Powerpoint

@cybersal asks @RSessions a different sort of s/ware complexity question from his usual stuff: "How would you compare complexity of PowerPoint 2007 v 2003?"

The first point I want to make in discussing this question is that there are two different things, both called "PowerPoint". One is a lump of shrink-wrapped software, which I call technology-as-built. The other is the PowerPoint that people actually use, which I call technology-in-use. (Fans of Chris Argyris will recognize the parallels with espoused theory versus theory-in-use). If different groups or communities use PowerPoint differently, there may be many different PowerPoints-in-use corresponding to a single PowerPoint-as-built.
 

The distinction between technology-as-built and technology-in-use is extremely important for technology adoption and management. (My favourite example of this remains Lotus Notes, which for some time after its initial release was mostly used in pretty boring and unimaginative ways, merely as a jumped-up file management system. I guess it took at least two years before the technology-in-use started to catch up with and then exceed the intentions of the Lotus design team.) My notion of technology maturity is based on a stable relationship between technology-as-built and technology-in-use.

However, this distinction is largely ignored by IT analysts, who try to rank the "vision" of the software producers but entirely overlook the "vision" of software consumers. This is related to my point about Venturesome Consumption (Oct 2009).


By the way, the distinction is implicit in my post yesterday, Blame Excel, where I distinguished between blaming things on Excel itself (technology-as-built) and blaming things on people using Excel stupidly (technology-in-use). Is Microsoft responsible for how Excel or PowerPoint are used? Clearly software providers cannot be blamed for the stupidity of their customers, but Microsoft clearly has a strong interest in promoting good use of its products, and providing some protection against bad use.

Now here's how this distinction applies to the question of software complication and complexity. Let's acknowledge that each successive version of PowerPoint-as-built has loads more features, new menu options, design styles and so on. But let's also acknowledge that many PowerPoint users are still using

• the same limited subset of features
• the same font (Ariel)
• the same style (bullet points, like this)
• the same clip art (those horrible cartoon men). 

When people talk about Death-By-PowerPoint, they are generally talking about PowerPoint-in-Use. It is clearly possible to produce lively and informative PowerPoint presentations, but many people (including Bill Gates) don't seem to find this very easy.


So there is a growing gulf between the technology-as-built and the technology-in-use. This is where the unnecessary complexity gets in. The more complicated the technology-as-built,  the greater the risk of poor results from the technology-in-use.

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Update: I just found a presentation by Professor Yannis Gabriel called Against the tyranny of PowerPoint: Technology-in-use and technology abuse (2008).



Related Posts: The PowerPoint Collection

PowerPoint slides

If you have sat through as many poor presentations as I have, you will find it easy to believe the quote in the Washington Post last week from a US Major.

"I thought I understood Iraq and the history because I had seen PowerPoint slides, but I really didn't." [Washington Post, November 21st, 2006 via Duck of Minerva].

Of course it is not Microsoft's fault if the Pentagon makes inappropriate use of the available tools. Loads of stupid documents have been written in Word, and loads of bad accounts produced in Excel. But it is PowerPoint gets most of the criticism.

Part of the problem is that people use a general-purpose tool like PowerPoint when they should be using a special-purpose tool - such as a planning or analysis tool. PowerPoint may often be good enough for communicating material, but it is not good enough for developing material.

There is a vast array of special-purpose tools out there for developing material. Analytical tools, modelling tools, requirements analysis tools, planning and scheduling tools, risk analysis tools, simulation tools. I have little doubt that there must be some pretty bright people in the Pentagon who are adept with these tools. So why on earth did they use PowerPoint for planning the US-led intervention in Iraq?

The recent book Fiasco reports a number of senior US military personal who were highly critical of this:

"... reliance on slides rather than formal written orders seemed to some military professionals to capture the essence of Rumsfeld's amateurish approach to war planning." [Further extracts quoted in Arms and the Influence. See also Presentation Zen.]

Do you sometimes use PowerPoint when you should be using some other tool? Do you sometimes use PowerPoint just because it's there sitting on your laptop, and because loading/learning some other tool is too much trouble and expense?

I don't mind admitting that I often use PowerPoint when I could (perhaps should) be using some other tool. But only on small low-risk tasks, and never when there are lives or billions of dollars at stake.



Related Posts: The PowerPoint Collection

Who's the Dick in the WineBar?

A roaming day on Thursday. After a couple of fairly short meetings at opposite ends of London, I found myself borrowing some office space and broadband in Brick Lane for most of the afternoon.

From there it was only a short walk to Bedales WineBar in Spitalfields, where James Governor of Redmonk had organized a Web 2.0 networking event, with folks from Adobe (who kindly paid for the wine), IBM Hursley (aka EightBar) and Microsoft, as well as a number of independents. I had difficulty finding it, so I asked an intelligent-looking woman who just turned out to be Emily the manager, on her way back to the place with an armful of delicious-looking bread.

This meeting was reported by Darren, Derek and Tink, as well as James himself. James is clearly a regular (a previous meeting he organized was reported by Adrian), and Emily looked after us very well.

Too well perhaps. The wine was excellent, and my recollection of the discussions is accordingly vague. I know I talked a bit to Peter Bell about the Wax workshop I attended a couple of weeks ago. I also think I must have been talking about presentation style (see my earlier post on Beyond Bullet Points), because someone (I'm not sure who, but thanks anyway) told me I absolutely had to watch Dick Hardt's video Who's the Dick on My Site? Which I did, and also his earlier Identity 2.0 Keynote presentation. (This was recommended on the Presentation Zen site last October, but I didn't follow it up at the time. See also Some Notes on the Lessig Method by Stephen O'Grady.)

If you are accustomed to traditional PowerPoint, beware. You may find these videos disturbing.



Related Posts: The PowerPoint Collection

Beyond Bullet Points

Some of my friends at Microsoft (Mike, Simon) are excited (Mike says "gung ho") about Cliff Atkinson and his "new" presentation style, based on the work of psychology professor Richard E. Mayer.

On Cliff's website, there is a 15-page free download called Five ways to reduce PowerPoint overload (pdf). Good stuff, mostly. No doubt many people will make do with the free download, and won't get around to buying the whole book.

But I am afraid I found Cliff's blog extremely off-putting. Every post seems to be about HIM.

• Join ME for a no-cost web seminar
• Please participate in MY survey
• LA Times writes an article about ME
• Microsoft Press is publishing MY book
• Check out the recording of MY seminar

For more content and less ego, I recommend the Presentation Zen blog, where Garr Reynolds spends most of his time appreciating (and encouraging his readers to learn from) a variety of great presenters - including comedians and musicians as well as professional speakers.

Other useful sources on PowerPoint include Edward Tufte and Seth Godin.

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Bill Gates has been widely criticized for his poor presentation style [summary]. At Mix06, he abandoned PowerPoint and spoke without slides [review]. A distinct improvement, although he is never going to be a natural speaker like Steve Jobs [video links]. But then Steve Jobs was sometimes criticized for his weak strategic thinking [comment]. Which is more important - smooth presentation, or strategic thinking?

Like any tool, PowerPoint needs to be regarded as a means to an end, not an end in itself. Sometimes the right thing is not to use it [Garr, Seth]. Microsoft certainly understands this better now.



Related Posts: The PowerPoint Collection

Mix06 Keynote

A fascinating keynote speech by Bill Gates at Mix06, without any slides. (He's obviously been reading the blogs about his use of PowerPoint). Some great presentations by mySpace and the BBC, followed by a conversation with Tim O'Reilly.

Tim tried to push Bill into supporting Web 2.0. Can we find some examples of collaborative, bottom-up emergence in the Microsoft/Windows experience? Bill's answers all seemed to be about Microsoft controlling things better, putting in better security features and so on, based on install volume (what economists call "learning by doing") and user feedback. I don't think this was really what Tim was pushing for.

Tim also asked about competition from companies with different business models - Google, Apple - and Microsoft competing with telcos. Bill evaded these questions, and talked instead about Microsoft moving away from a device-centric model of computing towards a user-centric model of software. Your user preferences are available (though services) to any device you happen to pick up - including (if you are authenticated to use it) your friend's phone. This looks like a very important development, which is related to the context-based services I've been talking about on my SOAPbox blog.

This is relevant to the competition with Apple, because the Apple solution remains proprietary and tightly controlled - especially in terms of DRM - and this gives some credibility to Microsoft's attempt to position itself as more open and interoperable. As a representative of a major content provider, the BBC speaker was positive about Microsoft's DRM position.

The keynote lasted longer than I had expected, so I had to leave before the end. I'll try to catch the rest on the Internet later.