Should PowerPoint Stay The Gold Standard For Presentations?

I have used power point religiously – so as I read Has The Goon Squad Come For Power Point I was struck by the idea that while PPT can help add structure, it can take away from the natural “connectivity,” of the information being represented.  However, I have always seen PPT as a supplement to a speech, presentations and the like.

Tufte (2006) discusses how the cognitive style of PowerPoint like the ease of the use of bullet points and other info-condensing styles often “dilute,” the info being presented;  “By leaving out the narrative between the points, the bullet outline ignores and conceals the causal assumptions and analytic structure of the reasoning,” Tufte, 2006). 

Tufte’s example of how data like cancer survivor rates can often loses its power to convey necessary information within PPT because the style of PPT makes them hard to understand because they lack contextual information.  

While looking at some of the examples on the Duarte site – I found the presentation guidelines for ESPN to be very relate-able to this discussion.  I think the presentation, in providing a legend of sorts, is able to give the preceding presentation more relevance and context.  So it seems I don’t have to stop using PPT but my take-away from this week’s discussion is that visuals can be ineffective without context!

Here is an an example of a PPT that deploys some good contextual elements that help provide context for the information to follow in the rest of the presentation.   In my current consulting job we work with overseas partners and the we have to make extra efforts to provide contextual information so we can help understanding accross culutural boundires.  

The brass tacks: PPT is an excellent tool if you supplement it with good context within the presentation themselves and with an accompanying speech can be very useful. 

References:

Behind the Screens. (n.d.). Retrieved June 16, 2015, from http://www.duarte.com/portfolio/behind-the-screens/

Tufte, E. R. (2006). Beautiful evidence. New York.

Has the Goon Squad Come For PowerPoint? (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2015, from

http://www.duarte.com/blog/has-the-goon-squad-come-for-powerpoint/