An article in the New York Times (free registration required) asserts that the misuse of Powerpoint has caused serious harm to corporate communication culture. The article is a little over the top — suggesting that a poorly-authored Powerpoint presentation was at least partly to blame for the Columbia disaster.
I’m a big believer in managing use rather than blaming tools. I’m sure I’m in the minority here (because managing people is, you know, hard). Powerpoint certainly isn’t intended to inject genius into an otherwise boring presentation, and it can’t make you into a good writer or a good public speaker. I’m constantly amazed when I see single Powerpoint slides containing more than 10 bullet-points on a slide, more than 100 words on a single slide, or a color scheme that makes you want to lose your lunch — to say nothing of the all-too-common tactic of reading your slides, point-by-point, in front of a live audience. Sitting in a presentation like this makes me want to jab my eyes out with red-hot knitting needles. I can’t believe people aren’t called on it more often.
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Edward Tufte says that PowerPoint is Evil. I’m inclined to agree with him. In earlier work consulting for the investigation of the Challenger explosion, he suggested that poor infographic design may have abetted that disaster as well.
A different point is put on the message when we consider it in an historical context.
Between the templates and the other whizbang that PowerPoint provides, I can’t help but think that perhaps it gives presenters a false sense of confidence …?
I agree in principle, but I wonder what kind of suggestions Prof. Tufte would make for improvement?
Shouldn’t the audience shoulder some of the ownership of evil-doing? Does the audience suddenly lose their faculty for critical thinking and relevant questioning just because the information has been nicely packaged in PPT? Or, has everyone simply gone to sleep? Whether done up in PPT or handed out as a pretty graph, the information is bound to be presented in the same basic fashion. What do you think we’d all be doing differently if PPT weren’t available?
Oh, and the NY Times article is archived now, meaning it’s no longer free.