the evils of PP…who knew?
“PP convenience for the speaker can be costly to both content and audience. These costs result from the cognitive style characteristic of the standard default PP presentation: foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a deeply hierarchical single-path structure…a preoccupation with format not content, an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”
Umm, yeah, I think that about sums it up.
I think Tufte makes some very good points; most notably, he reminds us to focus on content and not be distracted by PP features. I was going to counter his argument against bullets by saying that it should be the role of the presenter to fill in the info/analysis/causality between them, but I had no idea these presentations are being used in place of written reports. Which, after reading the article, sounds like a scary thought. I’m glad that he includes some helpful suggestions/alternatives (like handouts for dense data), though, because otherwise this is a bit too much of a diatribe.
Actually it reminded me of the Visual History book some of us read in Craft last semester, about thinking visually. And it’s true, why use text that people will spend 1 second reading, and which you’re saying anyway, when you could use a diagram or image that contains a lot more information? It seems like “thinking visually” about CONTENT, rather than than about the pretty package, is a good way to approach PP?