Bill: Design HCI and all that

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:11:51 GMT

TED has put up a presentation from 2005 that is so good your head will explode. Not only is Scott McCloud's content stimulating and directly relevant to our world of presentation, his unique presentation of his story is a wonderful example of what is possible with your basic slideware app. I've talked about Scott many times before on this site (such as here) and I talk about him a bit in the Presentation Zen book as does Nancy Duarte in Slide:ology. This is just a fantastic TED talk and powerful yet simple use of the slide medium. If the principles Scott talks about excite you, then I recommend his best-selling book on the art of comics (and why and how they matter) called Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. This is an amazing book with applications far beyond the world of comics. Watch his talk below. You can find download options here on the TED site including a higher-rez version.

Good advice from comics guru Scott McCloud
So much good stuff in this TED talk, but here's something that sticks out to me. Three types of vision:

Vision based on what one can not see (unseen and unknowable)
Vision based on what has been proven (or has been seen)
Vision based on what can be, what may be based on knowledge (but is not yet proven)

What Scott is saying is that there are many ways to pursue a vision based on what can/may be. People are doing this in science, the arts, politics, personal endeavors, etc. What it all comes down to, says scott, is this:

Learn from everyone
Follow no one
Watch for patterns
Work like hell

These four guidelines will take you far indeed as you create your own life story.

(I will be attending my first TED conference in a couple of weeks in Long Beach, California. I feel very blessed and honoured to be attending this year and look forward to sharing all that I learn at TED here and live on my Twitter site, my Posterous site, etc.)

[Presentation Zen]

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:34:03 GMT

Zen, jazz, & creativity: Lessons from the art of jazz (part III).

When I was a small child, our house on the Oregon coast had a small Japanese garden in the front yard, complete with stone pagodas and a koi pond. Looking back, I wonder if a kind of traditional Japanese aesthetic at least an Oregonian's version of it influenced me even then? At the same time, our house was filled with boxes of jazz records including albums from Miles, Coltrane, Bassie, Ellington, etc. and pop records from vocalists such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. My older brothers spun records by The Beatles, The Stones, and The Dave Clark Five, etc. I dug those records too, but something drew me to the jazz recordings. My father, who would later pass suddenly when he was only 48, was a good amateur jazz vocalist with a wonderful voice; he occasionally performed live even after he became a company worker. I credit my father with introducing me to jazz. No one gave me formal lessons in jazz appreciation or in the Zen aesthetics as a kid, but the influence of those elements were surely there, even though I would not really appreciate those things until much later in life.¬[sgl dagger]

To those unfamilair with it, jazz can seem like an abstraction. Zen can seem quite abstract and removed from our daily lives as well. But in fact both are far more concrete than that, both are much more concerned with direct experience and direct connections, connections to reality.By mere coincidence, I have built a deep appreciation year by year for both Zen and for jazz. Though my intention was never to compare, looking back I now see that the similar elements, tenets, and complementary components of jazz and Zen are quite profound. Here a list of a few lessons that both jazz and Zen practice have taught me over the years. These lessons, all seemingly commonsensical, can be applied to presentation or to any creative endeavor.

Twenty-one things I've learned from jazz and Zen

In structure there is freedom and spontaneity.
Restraints and limitations can be great liberators.
Don't ever force it; be ever natural.
Good intentions are key.Sincerity is king, and yet...
It's not about you.
Listen more than speak.
Speak only when you have something to say, and then in the most economic way possible.¬[sgl dagger]
Your approach can be direct and subtle at the same time.
Fear is natural (and human), but work through it and past it. Don't let fear hold you back.
Mistakes are part of it (do not worrying about them).
Embrace the power of now, this moment.
Technique matters, but it's not the most important element.
Make no pretenses; put up no facades.
Laugh, smile if you feel like it why not?
Share yourself with others; make a contribution.
Simplicity is supremely beautiful, yet difficult to obtain.
Emptiness and silence are powerful elements of expression.
Remove the clutter, strive for absolute clarity.
If you think you have mastered it, you've have already begun your descent.
Always be learning. Always be learning. Always be learning.
Curiosity is your greatest gift, nurture it (in yourself and in others)

10 Rules for making good design..

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:57:14 GMT

10 rules for making good design.

I picked up a book recently called Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual by Timothy Samara* that is quite good. Samara starts off his book after a short discussion on what is meant by design and graphic design [base ']Äî with a list of "Twenty Rules for Making Good Design" which includes a brief but good elaboration of each of the rules. Now, as Samara points out, rules are important to understand but it's certainly permissible to break the rules (he even shows how later in the book). What is not permissible is to remain ignorant of the rules. Samara quotes Typographer David Jury here: "Rules can be broken but never ignored." I tend to think in terms of Principles rather than Rules, though this is really just a matter of semantics. This stuff is old hat for longtime designers, but for the rest of us Samara's list of 20 Rules is a useful reminder. Here are just Ten of Samara's twenty rules below just as he wrote them (though not in this order). I chose the rules (principles) which I think are both the most important and yet easiest to grasp without much or any explanation. Keep these rules in mind when designing your next presentation or website, poster, etc.

10 design rules to keep in mind
(1) Communicate, don't decorate.
(2) Speak with a visual voice.
(3) Use two typeface families maximum. OK, maybe three.
(4) Pick colors on purpose.
(5) If you can do it with less, then do it.
(6) Negative space is magical [base ']Äî create it, don't just fill it up!
(7) Treat the type as image, as though it's just as important.
(8) Be universal; remember that it's not about you.
(9) Be decisive. Do it on purpose or don't do it at all.
(10) Symmetry is the ultimate evil.

This list of ten above which I pulled from Samara's list of twenty are self-explanatory for the most part; let me clarify just two of them. Number 3 (Type). Remember that even within one family there is lots of variation possible (e.g., regular, light, ultra light, narrow, italic, bold, extra bold, and so on depending on the typeface), so consider even working with just one professional typeface family for a project and see what you can do. I have a preference for san serif typefaces but a combination can work well too in display type (such as Apple using Helvetica and Apple Garamond together). Number 10 (Symmetry). OK, symmetry isn't evil, in fact it can be quite beautiful, and calming, (or serious, etc.). But symmetry can also be rather dull and predictable. Asymmetrical designs are more dynamic generally and can allow for a bit more freedom of expression. Like the author, I have a thing for asymmetry myself (maybe because my nose is crooked from playing American football). The Zen aesthetic is all about asymmetry as well (Fukinsei)

Another good book
Another book I received recently that I really like is Graphic Design: The New Basics by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips (a pic of my copy on posterous). This is a good book. It covers the fundamentals of graphic design, much of which has not changed over time (that's why they are fundamentals). But the author stresses some fundamentals such as layering and transparency that have become perhaps more important today for many reasons, including the fact that powerful digital design tools are ubiquitous and layering and transparency effects are easier to do now.

* I do not have Timothy Samara's newest book [base ']Design Evolution: A Handbook of Basic Design Principles Applied in Contemporary Design but it looks good. I'll let you know.

[Presentation Zen]

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:32:16 GMT

Deep or wide? You decide..

The problem with many presentations is that people simply try to say too much in a short amount of time. Most people struggle with practicing restraint in the preparation stage including myself and have a hard time making the tough choices about inclusion and exclusion before the presentation. Often no time is given to the idea of exclusion and paring down. As a result, audiences all too often get more than they want, need, or can comprehend. We know this is true of many executive presentations, sales presentations, and conference presentations, etc. In The Craft of Scientific Presentations Michael Alley touches on a similar idea. In this book he suggests that you can go deep (depth) or you can go wide (scope) but it is very difficult to do both in, say, an hour lecture or conference presentation. The key, then, is to set realistic goals, and if you decide that you need to go deep then you have to seriously consider reducing the scope. Sometimes, in life as in presentations, you just have to make a choice about what's important, and let go of the rest (at least for the time being).

Slides adapted from The Craft of Scientific Presentations.

And in the classroom?
I have often wondered if this idea of including a very large breadth of material in a short amount of time is a problem for teachers and students as well in traditional classroom settings. Now, teaching daily lessons is a different animal from the kind of presentations I generally focus on here, to be sure, but I have wondered for the longest time if teachers [base ']Äî especially college professors [base ']Äî attempt to cover too much ground (and not enough depth) per semester. That is, do too many classes sacrifice depth and understanding for scope? Yes, it depends on the subject I suppose, but is it better to learn, say, only six core ideas deeply and repeatedly or is it better to cover as much ground as possible and go for the greatest breadth in the time alloted? Great scope certainly makes for an impressive syllabus and perhaps even a feeling of accomplishment for those who pushed hard and got the highest marks. But how many of the students who got a 'C' or better will actually remember what they studied a year later?

What got me thinking about this again was this presentation by economist Robert Frank speaking at Google.You already know about the talks available at TED, but you may not be aware of the hundreds of presentations and speeches available for free that are part of the @Google Talks including Authors@Google, Women@Google, Candidates @Google, etc. (I have been ask to present for Google as well and will be there hopefully later in the year). Except for the all too familiar PowerPoint style, Dr. Frank gives an interesting talk. But what I found compelling in the talk were his comments concerning depth/scope and narrative learning theory. I invite you to watch his presentation, but you can see the gist of the points I'm referring to below in his slides (click for larger view).

Watch Robert Frank's @Google talk below.

LINK
The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas by Robert Frank

[Presentation Zen]

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:00:38 GMT

The best and the worst of 2007.

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu (Happy New Year!). Back in Japan at last. No New Year's video greeting card this year, but checkout last year's if you have not seen it.

If you were asked, could you come up with a top-10 best/worst communicators list for 2007? I have not compiled such a list, but legendary communications expert Bert Decker[base ']Äîbased in San Francisco, California[base ']Äîpublished his annual top-10 best/worst list again a few days ago. Very interesting list indeed (I was especially interested in #9 in the "best" category...). Bert's list features those in the US. Can you recommend some other best/worst communicators from in or outside the US? I have many favorites, of course, such as Seth, Steve, Guy, and many more. But here are some non-Americans that are exceptional presenters: Markuz Wernli Saito (Switzerland), Daniel Rodriguez (Mexico), Hans Rosling (Sweden), and Marco Montemagno (Italy). And my favorite speech of 2007 is this 1992 speech from a 12-year old Canadian, Severn Cullis-Suzuki. Any others?

[Presentation Zen]

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 12:22:28 GMT

10 links to cool, high-rez images

??? <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/";>Earth Observatory<a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/";> (NASA). So much goodness here. I'm sure every teacher already has this site bookmarked.
??? <a href="http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/";>Visible Earth (NASA). This is a new collection of earth imagery from NASA. I particularly like <a href="http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438";>this photo below. Amazing! Click on the image to get a much larger size.
<a href="http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1438";><img border="0" src="http://www.presentationzen.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/11/29/earth_lights_lrg.jpg"; title="Earth_lights_lrg" alt="Earth_lights_lrg">

Images in NASA. A collection of about a thousand images of historical interest scanned at high-resolution in several sizes.
NASA multimedia. Includes many high-quality photos as well.
Photos by Astronauts. A gazillion cool images from space.
NOAA Photo Library. Search the site or browse through "collections" at the top. Hundreds and hundreds of historical photos in there too.
Uncle Sam's Photos. A directory of the U.S Government's free stock photo sites.
The (US) National Archives. The National Archives has more than 30 million photos stored in several buildings in the US, many of them are available online.

WWII posters. Not too many high-rez images here, but very interesting. Sizes may be good enough for slides.
Public Domain Pictures. A repository for free public domain photos.

Easy to search. I love this one.

This may seem like an odd potpourri of links, but these are sites from which I have been gathering images lately and just thought you may be interested for future reference. If you know any other public domain sites that offer good quality in the form of historical archives, etc. please share your links in the comments section below. Much appreciated.

RELATED
Where can you find good images? (PZ)

- Garr [Presentation Zen]

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:26:28 GMT

New website accessibility tool released. A new website accessibility tool has been developed in Australia to improve learning for students and teachers with disabilities, particularly those who are blind or have low vision. The new program has been developed by national ICT agency education.au, the Department of Education, Science and Training and leading not-for-profit organisation Vision Australia. [Vocational Education & Training Headlines]

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:25:36 GMT

World usability day: Free usability review.

Next thursday Nov 8th is World usability day, and there are events all over the world.

For you folks online, just like year’s past I’m offering the first 10 people who leave a comment a free expert usability review of the website they post (it doesn’t have to be their own website).

How to get a free expert usability review:

Leave a comment, include your e-mail address and a URL.
If you’ve got a specific problem or user scenario you’re worried about, mention it.
If you’re in the top 10, I’ll post your review online.
If you’re after #10, be creative. If you make me laugh you might get yours too.

Bonus: If you work on stuff for cell phones or mobile devices, Sender11, a mobile design expert, is offering free usability reviews for you.

[scottberkun.com]

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:55:57 GMT

California.

You get your brand new iPod home, in its shiny black box, which you open, and the first words you see are:

“Designed by Apple in California.”

It’s printed on the back of every iPod and iPhone, too:

Ah, the way these five words evoke a flurry of happy memories.

You think of California, not the actual state, with its endless dismal boulevards full of muffler shops and donut stores, but the California of memory: the Beach Boys, the Summer of Love, and the beatniks, a utopian land of opportunity, an escape, where you go when you leave behind the cold winters and your conservative parents back in Cleveland.

And “Apple” in California is, of course, on the literal level, a computer company, and not a very nice one, but put those words together and you think of apple orchards, and the Beatles, and you think of how Forrest Gump got rich off of Apple stock. And “designed in California...” It's not made. It's designed. In California. Like a surfboard. Or a Lockheed XP-80.

And, of course, it might distract your attention from the fact that we no longer make things like this in America. We design them, but they pretty much have to be made in China.

Either way, the iPod slogan Designed by Apple in California triggers a flood of emotional responses that just make you happy to have selected this MP3 player.

Of course, Microsoft's Apple Envy is so impossible to disguise that the back of the Zune says, "Hello from Seattle:"

Um... excuse me? Hello from Seattle? That has, I'm afraid, none of the same resonance. It evokes nothing. Boeing and rain, maybe. Kurt Cobain's unhappiness.

But really it's just a desperate desire to be like Apple, without even a smidgen of understanding of the culture code that makes Designed by Apple in California work. It's not even clear that anyone at Microsoft would understand that there is such a thing as a culture code, although they are to be forgiven for not reading important books by French intellectuals. After all, they're in Seattle and it's raining.

Anyway, we already did “Hello.” “Hello” was charming once. In 1984.

Now it's just old.

Back to California. I'm about to get on a plane and head out to the California of Fleet Week, the Blue Angels, the Castro Street Fair, and the 49ers. Not to mention the giant Italian Heritage Day Parade.

Next week Ben and I will bring the FogBugz World Tour to the bear state. We can still squeeze you in:

Monday - San Francisco - full, with a long waiting list
Tuesday - Emeryville - still room, reserve your place soon
Wednesday - Mountain View - full, with a short waiting list
Thursday - Los Angeles - full, but no waiting list so reserve a place and we'll probably find room for you
Thursday - Irvine - full, with a long waiting list
Friday - San Diego - still a few places left; reserve your place soon.

If you're coming to the event in Los Angeles, please note that it has been moved to the W in Westwood.

Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

By Joel Spolsky. [Joel on Software]

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 23:44:17 GMT

Make your presentations stickier: these 3 books can help.

If you want to be a better presenter or help others to be here are the three books you should get (two I have recommended repeatedly). Notice that these are not books about presentation. Most of the great books that will help you make better presentations are not specifically about presentations at all, and certainly not about how to use slideware. The first book gives the context. The second one gives the basics of design. And the final one which I am introducing to you today Made to Stick gives you the ammunition for crafting messages that are simple, effective, and sticky.

(1) Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind gives us the context of the new world we[base ']re living in and why high touch talents and that includes exceptional presentation skills are more important than ever before. Professionals today around the globe need to understand how and why the so-called right-brain aptitudes of Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning matter like never before. The best presentations of our generation will be created by people who have strong whole mind aptitudes and talents. (Dan Pink's blog).

(2) Universal Principles of Design. You will not learn how to crop an image in PowerPoint, or any other tips on using slideware from this book, but you will get a very good and intelligent introduction to fundamental design principles and practical applications of those concepts. A good complement to this book is The Elements of Graphic Design which provides more depth specifically in the area of graphic design. First comes understanding, then comes technique.

(3) Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is my favorite book of the summer. I can[base ']t believe I didn't read it sooner. (My pal Nancy Duarte gave me a copy; she said she knew I would love it. She was right!) In this book the Heath brothers are interested in the question of what makes some ideas effective and memorable and other ideas utterly forgettable? Some ideas stick and others fade away. Why? What the authors found and explain simply and brilliantly in their book is that sticky ideas share just a few principles in common. Sticky ideas have elements of these six key attributes: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories. And yes, these six compress nicely into the acronym SUCCESs. (Made to Stick website.)

Think in terms of SUCCESs
The six principles are relatively easy to incorporate into messages including presentations and keynote addresses but most people fail to use them. Why? The authors say that the biggest reason why most people fail to craft effective or sticky messages is because of what they call the Curse of Knowledge. The Curse of Knowledge is essentially the condition whereby the deliverer of the message can not imagine what it[base ']s like not to posses his level of background knowledge on the topic. When he speaks in abstractions to the audience, it makes perfect sense him, but often to him alone. In his mind it seems simple and obvious. The six principles SUCCESs are your weapons, then, to fight your own Curse of Knowledge (we all have it) so that you can make messages that stick.

Here[base ']s an example that the authors used early in the book to explain the difference between a good and sticky message and a weak (yet all too common) message. Look at these two messages that address the same idea. One of them should seem very familiar to you.

(a) Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.

Or[base ']Ä¶

(b) [base ']put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.

The first message sounds similar to CEO-speak of today and is barely comprehensible, let alone memorable. The second message which is actually from a 1961 speech by JFK has every element of SUCCESs and it motivated a nation toward a specific goal that changed the world. JFK, or at least his speech writers, knew that abstractions are not memorable, nor do they motivate. Yet how many speeches today by CEOs and other leaders contain phrases like maximize shareholder value[base ']Ä¶yada, yada, yada? Here[base ']s a quick summary of the six principles you should keep in mind when crystallizing your ideas and crafting your messages for speeches, presentations, or any other form of communication. (I[base ']ve included large thumbs of the slides I[base ']ll use in future when I talk about these ideas from Made to Stick).

Simple. If everything is important then nothing is important. If everything is priority then nothing is priority. You must be ruthless in your efforts to simplify not dumb down your message to its absolute core. We[base ']re not talking about shallow sound bites here. Every idea if you work hard enough can be reduced to it bare essential meaning. For your presentation, what[base ']s the key point? What[base ']s the core? Why does (should) it matter? For your visuals the mantra is: Maximum effect, minimum means.

Unexpectedness. You can get people[base ']s interest by violating their expectations. Surprise people. Surprise will get their interest. But to sustain their interest you have to stimulate their curiosity. The best way to do that is to pose questions or open up holes in people[base ']s knowledge and then fill those holes, say the authors. Make the audience aware that they have a gap in their knowledge and then fill that gap with the answers to the puzzle (or guide them to the answers). Take people on a journey of discovery. (The Discovery Channel[base ']s MythBusters is about the only thing I can watch on the virtually unwatchable boob-tube these days as the TV program does a wonderful job of posing questions and then answering them, often in quite unexpected ways.)

Concrete. Use natural speech and give real examples with real things, not abstractions. Speak of concrete images not of vague notions. Proverbs are good, say the authors, at reducing abstract concepts to concrete, simple, but powerful (and memorable) language. For example, here in Japan we say ii seki ni cho or kill two birds with one stone. Easier than saying something like [base ']let[base ']s work toward maximizing our productivity by increasing efficiency across departments, etc. And the phrase [base ']go to the moon and back by JFK (and Ralph Kramden before him)? That[base ']s concrete. You can visualize that.

Credible. If you are famous in your field you may have built-in credibility (but even that doesn[base ']t go as far as it used to). Most of us, however, do not have that kind of credibility so we reach for numbers and cold hard data to support our claims as market leaders and so on. Statistics, say the Heath brothers, are not inherently helpful. What[base ']s important is the context and the meaning of those statistics. Put it in terms people can visualize. 66 grams of fat or the equivalent of three Big Macs? And if you showed a photo of the burgers, wouldn[base ']t that stick? There are many ways to establish credibility, a quote from a client or the press may help, for example. But a long-winded account of your company[base ']s history won[base ']t help. In Japan especially, having a well-known trusted business partner or some big-name customers help establish credibility. The Heath brothers outline many good examples of credibility in their book..

Emotional. People are emotional beings. It is not enough to take people through a laundry list of talking points and information on your slides, you must make them feel something. There are a million ways to help people feel something about your content. Images, of course, are one way to have audiences not only understand your point better but also to feel and to have a more visceral and emotional connection to your idea. Explaining the devastation of the Katrina hurricane and flood in the US, for example, could be done with bulletpoints, data, and talking points, but images of the aftermath and the pictures of the human suffering that occurred told the story in ways words alone never could. Just the words Hurricane Katrina conjure up vivid images in your mind today no doubt. We make emotional connections with people not abstractions. When possible put your ideas in human terms. 90 grams of fat may seem concrete to you, but for others it's an abstraction. A picture (or verbal description) of an enormous plate of greasy French fries stacked high, a double cheese burger (extra cheese), and a large chocolate shake (extra whip cream) is visceral and sticky.

Stories. We tell stories all day long. It[base ']s how humans have always communicated. We tell stories with our words and even with our art. We express ourselves through the stories we share. We teach, we learn, and we grow through stories. Why is it that when the majority of smart, talented people have the chance to present we usually get streams of information rather than story from them? Great ideas and great presentations have an element of story to them. But you see storytelling everywhere in the workplace. In Japan, for example, it[base ']s a custom for a senior worker (sempai) to mentor a younger worker (kohai) on various issues concerning the company history and culture, and of course on how to do the job. The sempai does much of his informal teaching trough storytelling, though nobody calls it that. But that[base ']s what it is. Once a younger worker hears the story of what happened to the poor guy who didn[base ']t wear his hardhat on the factory floor one day he never forgets the lesson (and he never forgets to wear his hardhat). Stories get our attention and are easier to remember than lists of rules.

(Yes, this post is too long for a blog; if I had more time I would[base ']ve made shorter. Sticky ideas, like presentations and blog posts, are also concise).

[Presentation Zen]

Mon, 21 May 2007 02:27:25 GMT

Google Universal Search.

Danny Sullivan has a backgrounder. "Google is undertaking the most radical change to its search results ever, introducing a "Universal Search" system that will blend listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages...The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities."

[Emergic]

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:53:05 GMT

CSSEdit 2.5 Makes CSS Even Easier. It's not Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail this week, but MacRabbit Software, with a significant update to CSSEdit, their sleek and powerful tool for making, editing, and understanding Cascading Style Sheets. (See "CSSEdit 2 to the Rescue!" 2007-01-29.) It's easy to understand the theoretical elegance of CSS for building modern Web sites, but when you're faced either with a blank page or a jumbled-up mess of someone else's styles, CSS can seem overwhelming. CSSEdit 2.0 went a long wa... By ace@tidbits.com (Adam C. Engst). [TidBITS]

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:53:24 GMT

Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?.

Last week an article appearing in The Sydney Morning Herald entitled Researcher points finger at PowerPoint generated quite a stir. The article highlighted findings by researchers from the University of New South Wales, including John Sweller who developed the Cognitive Load Theory back in the '80s. One of the findings mentioned in the article: it is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you both verbally and in written form at the same time. Since people can not read and listen well at the same time, the reporter suggested, then this may mean "the death of the PowerPoint presentation." The assumption being (apparently) that a presentation made with the aid of slideware such as PowerPoint or Keynote necessarily includes lines of text projected on a screen that mirror the spoken word of the presenter.

The article generated so much attention due in part to this quote by Professor Sweller:

"The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched."

[base '] John Sweller

Professor Sweller's comment makes a provocative headline and adds to the long list of professionals and researchers deriding the PowerPoint tool. I have added the professor's quote to my talks on the Presentation Zen approach. Two versions of the slide appear below.

Is PowerPoint a method?
I am assuming that what Professor Sweller means is that the way PowerPoint is used should be ditched, not the tool itself. Suggesting we abandon PowerPoint because it's often (usually?) misused and abused to produce awful presentation visuals is like saying we should dump the idea of 24-hour cable news because so much of it is vacuous rubbish. But whether we[base ']Äôre talking about bad TV or boring presentations, shouldn't we blame the content producers not the content medium? When people rail against PowerPoint they seem to be saying that PowerPoint is a method, and a flawed method at that. But is PowerPoint itself really a "method"? In a 2004 interview with Cliff Atkinson, Multimedia Learning author Richard Mayer said this:

"I do not think it makes sense to refer to PowerPoint as a method. Instead... PowerPoint is a medium that can be used effectively [base ']Äî that is, with effective design methods [base ']Äî or ineffectively, that is with ineffective design methods. We would not necessarily say that books are rarely a good method, because books can be designed using effective or ineffective methods."

[base ']Äî Richard Mayer

Cognitive load theory
I first read about the cognitive load theory as it relates to presentation in Richard Mayer[base ']Äôs Multimedia Learning. Sweller[base ']Äôs work is often cited in Multimedia Learning and many of his publications are also online. In this paper, for example, called Visualisation and Instructional Design (pdf), Sweller discusses several of the effects related to the cognitive load theory. For example, the modality effect shows that [base ']Äùworking memory can be increased by using dual rather than a single modality.[base ']Äù That is, it is more effective to target both the visual and auditory processors of working memory. Another effect in the cognitive load theory is called the redundancy effect (also outlined by Mayer in Multimedia Learning). The redundancy effect says that if one form of instruction (such as the spoken word) is intelligible and adequate then providing the same material in another form (such as lines of text on a screen that mimic the words being spoken) are redundant and can actually hurt understanding. This may seem counterintuitive and it certainly runs counter to many of the ways presentations are made in business or lesson taught in schools.

Below is another quote from Prof. Sweller from the same newspaper article. Here Sweller is surely referring to both the redundancy and modality effects:

"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."

[base ']Äî John Sweller

In the scenario describe by Sweller above the diagram uses a visual modality and the speech uses an auditory modality which should result in greater working memory capacity and better understanding, depending, of course, on what is being presented.

Words should be presented as speech
The article in The Sydney Morning Herald put the ol[base ']Äô bullet-filled PowerPoint slide back in the firing line. Good presentation techniques, and even classroom instruction methods, are as much art as science. Still, we can learn a lot from examining the findings from researchers such as Sweller and Mayer. Most of us know intuitively (or through experience) that presenting to an audience with text-filled slides does not work, but others [base ']Äî your boss perhaps [base ']Äî may need more convincing. This is where the research and evidence from specialists in psychology, education and other disciplines can be a great help. Research shows that visuals (animation) plus concise, simultaneous narration is better than just narration alone. When it comes to the issue of projected text on a screen and narration, Mayer draws this conclusion:

[base ']ÄúWords should be presented as speech (i.e., narration) rather than text (i.e., on-screen text) or as speech and text.[base ']Äù

[base ']Äî Richard Mayer

What to do about PowerPoint?
So, is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint? Hardly, but it is long past time to ditch the use of the ubiquitous bulleted-list templates found in both PowerPoint and Keynote. And it[base ']Äôs long past time that we realized that putting the same information on a slide that is coming out of our mouths usually does not help [base ']Äî in fact usually hurts our message. Next time you plan a presentation, then, start by using a pencil and pad, a whiteboard, or a stick in the sand [base ']Äî anything except jumping headfirst into slideware on your computer with its templates, outlines, and content wizards that may point you down a path you wish not to go. And as you examine your work from previous talks remember this rule of thumb: if your presentation visuals taken in the aggregate (e.g., your [base ']ÄúPowerPoint deck[base ']Äù) can be perfectly and completely understood without your narration, then it begs the question: why are you there?

LINKS
[base ']Ä¢ Book by John Sweller et al: Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load
[base ']Ä¢ Bert Decker[base ']Äôs take on the newspaper article

[Presentation Zen]

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:25:28 GMT

Signal-to-Noise ratio and the elimination of the nonessential.

One of the coolest, most useful books I have on my shelf is The Universal Principles of Design. This is a beautifully simple book and one that is immensely useful, a must for professionals and leaders from any discipline. The subtitle of the book pretty much sums it up: "100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design." Even trained designers will want this book somewhere on their shelf. Each of the 100 principles [base ']Äî most of them applicable to presentation design [base ']Äî is summarized with great clarity and with good visual examples in just two pages. References are given for each principle for those who want to go deeper, but for a quick reference, this book can't be beat.

Signal-to-noise ratio
The principles are presented in alphabetical order, beginning with "80/20 Rule" and "Accessibility," and finishing 210 pages later with "Uncertainty Principle" and "Weakest Link." Between the principles of "Shaping" and "Similarity" you will find a good summary of the "Signal-to-Noise Ratio" (SNR). The SNR principle is borrowed from more technical fields such as radio communications and electronic communication in general, but the principle itself is applicable to design and communication problems in virtually any field. The authors sum up the signal-to-noise ratio this way:

The ratio of relevant to irrelevant information in a display. The highest possible signal-to-noise ratio is desirable in design.

Above: A couple of older slides (from a Steve Ballmer keynote in 2005) with rather low signal-to-noise ratios.

Above: Even Steve Jobs can present simple data in a way that complicates rather than simplifies (or did the faux marble texture and 3D help illuminate?). Note too that the baseline starts at 1000 (though it is hard to tell where the baseline is).

"Excess is noise"
Ensuring the highest possible signal-to-noise ratio means communicating (designing) clearly with as little degradation to the message as possible. Degradation to the message can occur in many ways such as with the selection of inappropriate charts, using ambiguous labels and icons, or unnecessarily emphasizing items such as lines, shapes and symbols, etc. that do not play a key role in support of the message. In other words, if the item can be removed without compromising function, then strong consideration should be given to minimizing the element or removing it all together. For example, lines in grids or tables can often be made quite thin, lightened, or even removed. And footers and logos, etc. can usually be removed with good results (assuming your company "allows" you to). In a nutshell, the authors put it this way:

Every element in a design should be expressed to the extent necessary, but not beyond the extent necessary. Excess is noise.

In Visual Explanations, Edward Tufte refers to an important principle in harmony with SNR called "the smallest effective difference":

"Make all visual distinctions as subtle as possible, but still clear and effective."

[base ']Äî Edward Tufte

Related to the smallest effective difference is Occam's razor, which both Tufte and the authors of The Universal Principles of Design point out. Tufte sums up the Occam's razor this way:

"What can be done with fewer is done in vain with more."

Tufte goes on to say that a "...happy consequence of an economy of means is a graceful richness of information, for small differences allow more differences."

Above: This is a fake "Before" slide I made up rather quickly. The data being displayed is extremely simple, yet the eyes have to work pretty hard to get at the data. 98 new members in the first quarter of 2007 would be a very significant fact for the club, but perhaps a declarative sentence on the slide rather than a title would be more appropriate. The "noise" can be reduced in myriad ways (below).

Above: Examples of simpler ways to show the same data. Even the baseline was removed (left) since the bars define the endpoint, still a thin baseline may be appropriate as Tufte points out in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. There are many ways to display this kind of basic data; the two slides above are not necessarily "the best" way.

But is the non-essential always "noise"?
Do design elements which are not absolutely essential necessarily detract from a design? Occam's razor says that unnecessary elements decrease the design's efficiency and increase the possibility of unintended consequences. But does this mean that we must be ruthless and remove everything which is not absolutely "essential" to a design? There are those who say a minimalist approach is certainly best (and also beautiful); I tend to fall in to that camp. But efficiency itself is not necessarily an absolute good or always the ideal. (Would one admire the work of an efficient purse-snatcher for example?) Nonetheless, when it comes to the display of quantitative information (charts, tables, graphs, etc.), I strongly favor display designs which include the highest SNR as possible. With other visuals, however, we may want to consider including or retaining elements which serve to support the message at a more emotional level. This may seem like a contradiction with the principle of a high SNR, or the Occam's razor, and the idea that "less is more." However, sometimes emotional elements matter (sometimes a lot). John Maeda pointed this out in his book, The Laws of Simplicity. Maeda insists that the principle of reduction (removing the nonessential) is important, but he also admits that emotion is very important as well and that often more emotion is better than less:

"When emotions are considered above everything else, don't be afraid to add more ornament or layers of meaning."

[base ']Äî John Maeda

Design makes things clear, Maeda says, but art [base ']Äî the stuff of emotions [base ']Äî makes us wonder. Design can bring clarity to a message, art can help bring meaning. "Sometimes...clarity alone is not the best design solution." Presentation design is as much art as it is science, and, of course, aesthetics do matter. The Aesthetic-Usability Effect (also in the Universal Principles of Design) says that "aesthetic designs are perceived as easier to use than less-aesthetic designs." First impressions based on aesthetics are important, for example, as the way people think about or interact with a design will be influenced at some level by how the design looks or feels (to them). Clarity and the reduction of the nonessential are important, but we need to remember too that how a design looks influences perception.

The Google website is often mentioned when talking about sites that have cut everything visually except that which is essential. Yet there is emotion there too; the logo is large, colorful, and even "playfully seasonal."

As with all things...balance
Understanding what is noise and what is excess is an important design consideration. As pointed out in this paper by Michael Albers on SNR in documentation, what is considered noise will depend on the context. "An excess of noise can occur from either too much or too little information," says Albers. "... much of the real difficulties in communicating information do not fall within the technical realm. [They] fall within the people realm which revolves around the contextual aspects of the information." Use depends, then, on our particular circumstance, audience, and objectives. Ideas like SNR are good principles, but not rules to be blindly followed. In my opinion, designs with a high signal-to-noise ratio are not only generally clear, they often look good as well. But in the end, SNR is one principle among many to consider when creating visual messages.

Related links from Presentation Zen
[base ']Ä¢ 2-D or not 2-D
[base ']Ä¢ Noise and the elimination of the non-essential
[base ']Ä¢ Wabi-Sabi and Presentation Visuals (part I)
[base ']Ä¢ Wabi-Sabi and Presentation Visuals (part II)
[base ']Ä¢ Wabi-sabi simplicity as it relates to interface design (from 37 Signals)

[Presentation Zen]

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 05:32:36 GMT

TED: Jeff Han, A Year Later. Catapulted to geek stardom literally overnight at this high tech confab in 2006, inventor of mind-blowing touchscreen technology gives Wired News a glimpse into life as an entrepreneur and his new company, Perceptive Pixel. Kim Zetter reports from Monterey. [Wired News: Top Stories]

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:59:36 GMT

Let's start A 3D Robotics league.

We're big fans of the FIRST robotics championships in our house and are of course starting to work on our own Lego League sumo wrestling entries. But as challenging as it to create autonomous wheeled robots that can fight others or navigate mazes or obstacle courses, there's one thing that could be made even harder. You could add another dimension.

All the FIRST robotics contest are held on a two-dimensional plane (the ground or a tabletop). But what if you let the battle take to the skies, too? What if we created a competition for semiautonomous model airplanes, helicopters and rockets? Call it the 3D Robotics League.

After all, modern UAVs grew out of the radio-control airplane scene and the technologies that allow them to fly themselves--gyros, video and other sensors, GPS, digital radio and onboard microprocessors--are now shrinking in size and falling in price at a rapid pace. You can buy a model airplane today for less than $60 that has an onboard computer and basic sensors, and standard model helicopters have gyroscopes and autopilot modes. GPS chips are already small enough to fit into cellphones.

We're right on the verge of an era where it will be possible for regular people, not just engineers, to create home-built UAVs and guided rockets. So why not create a formal set of challenges so that innovative teams could advance the state of the art, just as the FIRST league has done for terrestrial robotics? (In fact, the Koreans already have such a competition. The picture above is from that.)

Autonomous aircraft challenges could include navigating a course, dropping a marker near a target, dogfighting with another plane (using ultrasonic tagging), or landing near a designated spot, all pilotless. Some levels of competition would allow for piloted take-offs and landings and switching into autonomous mode for the competition part of the flight, while more advanced levels would be entirely under computer control.

For rockets, the competition would probably be of the surface-to-air missile variety--ranging from popping a balloon to hitting a target towed behind a model airplane. This might be seen as politically incorrect in an era where terrorists with Stingers are a real threat, so I may have to think of something less warlike. But you get the idea.

I was chatting about this with folks (including Larry Page, who is another RC plane enthusiast, of course) at the X-Prize Foundation dinner at the Google headquarters last night. The X-Prize is also a competition in the skies and the star-studded guest list (from Richard Branson to Tipper Gore to Robin Williams) was a testament to how widely that resonates. I don't think 3D Robotics needs an equally grand challenge and prize cup, but I do think that a little formal competition could really revolutionize the hobbyist scene, bridging robotics and radio control and creating a whole new level of challenge.

So now to do a little research and see who's already working in this field in the Bay Area and might want to get this started. Will Wright? Squid Labs? Steve Jurvetson? RoboGames? We'll see what a little emailing generates.

Meanwhile, when one of my kids' guided rocket shoots down a sibling's UAV, I will be a very proud father indeed.

[The Long Tail]

Sat, 03 Mar 2007 12:54:06 GMT

Al Gore: From "showing slides" to winning an Oscar.

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth won the Oscar for best documentary last week in Hollywood. Needless to say, this made the people behind the design of Al Gore's Keynote slides [base ']Äî Duarte Design [base ']Äî very happy indeed. "We are beside ourselves here," said Nancy Duarte, co-founder and principal of Duarte Design. Duarte Design began working with Al Gore in 2003 to build the presentation used for his talks on climate change given around the world, and later for "An Inconvenient Truth," which also won an Academy Award for Melissa Etheridge's "I Need To Wake Up," (see her music video on YouTube) the winner in "Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song." (The Inconvenient Truth DVD. The Book).

The Duarte approach
Duarte Design, founded in 1988, is unique in its presentation-design focus. The design firm, which has more than 60 employees, is able to cultivate an objective vantage point that helps their clients "uncover hidden value in their messages." Duarte calls this [base ']Äúmaking the invisible visible.[base ']Äù Experience and subject matter expertise are, of course, indispensable the designers at Duarte say, but sometimes this can actually block the formation of fresh perspectives. A new point of view usually arises, they say, from an unconscious shift in perception when the elements of the problem morph into the solution. "These insights are uniquely human and very personal," says Nancy.

The Duarte approach is for their designers and messaging strategists to understand and facilitate these unconscious shifts, to not only create powerful stories and aesthetics for their clients, but to manage them in such a way that allows their audience members to form individual insights. "Ultimately, that[base ']Äôs what makes communication the stickiest, allowing the recipient to experience epiphanies without being spoon fed," Nancy Said.

Forest for the trees
We are often so close to our issue (a product or research question, etc.) that we can not see the forest for the trees. This is where designers with open minds and open ears (and talent) can make a difference. But remember that design is not about decoration or making things pretty. Designers do not decorate, they make things clear, and they help the creator of the story make meaning.

In my visits to the Duarte office in Silicon Valley, I have always been impressed with the creative spirit and energy of the place. Their approach really seems to embrace the six aptitudes outlined in Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind (one of my favorite books): Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. These are aptitudes which are paramount in today's world. If a presentation is critically important, it is not just about giving information. More often than not it is a call to action (buy something, do something, change something, create something, etc.). And a call to action is as much about emotion as it is about logic and argument. Design, in the context of storytelling, helps to illuminate. Designers in this sense, then, are "illuminators" of a sort.

Nancy Duarte says that they are disciplined about harnessing the emotional value of visual grammar as well, orchestrating the aesthetic experience through well-known, but often neglected design practices such as grouping, isolation, and symmetry, etc. "It[base ']Äôs both art and science [base ']Äî and we[base ']Äôre seriously creative."

Helping Al Gore do his thing
When I visited the Duarte Design offices in December, Ryan Orcutt, one of their young designers, had just returned from helping Al Gore with his live TV appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show on the other side of the country.

Ryan said he was sent out on just a moments notice to the show to assist Al Gore in making edits or changes to his presentation before the show and also to assist the Oprah Show graphic designers in adapting the Keynote file into a new aspect ratio for the incredibly enormous screen on the set. The images where coming right from Keynote, in fact right from the MacBook Pro that was on stage with Al. Ryan said the Oprah graphics department did a great job adjusting images and movies so that they "looked amazing" on the screen and also on people's television sets. "It's been a very rewarding experience to work with Mr. Gore and his team," Ryan told me. "It's not often that you feel like the work you do is benefiting the world and it's been a real privilege to have that be a part of my job."

LINKS
[base ']Ä¢ Duarte press release
[base ']Ä¢ Al Gore: another presenter extraordinaire? (PZ)
[base ']Ä¢ Duarte Design helps Al Gore "go visual" (PZ)
[base ']Ä¢ More Gore, more Guy (PZ)

[Presentation Zen]

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 22:09:45 GMT

Bullets and "delusional" briefing slides.

Another set of PowerPoint briefing slides was released to the public recently. The slides, which were obtained by the National Security Archive under the Freedom of Information Act, show what planners in 2002 projected might occur if the US invaded Iraq (get all slides in PDF). The slides contain "completely unrealistic assumptions about a post-Saddam Iraq..." according to National Security Archive Executive Director Thomas Blanton. These PowerPoint Slides were used to brief the White House and Donald Rumsfeld in 2002. (See CNN article and video report.)

These slides were likely never projected on a screen. PowerPoint decks like this are instead often printed and used in the US government and military as a kind of document. (See earlier posts related to slideumentation here, here, and here). Slides like these would not make for good visuals, but they do not make for good documents either. Even though the title of the slide (err, "page") below is "Key Planning Assumptions," the problem with presenting bullets like this is that important assumptions about each bullet point are left unstated and unexplained. Since printed slides like these are acting as de facto documents to be left behind and examined later, why not present the information with more written explanation and greater clarity in a properly written document which adheres to the principles of good writing and good document design?

Is the last bullet the most or least important?
In a document like the one above, what is the relationship of the bullets? Is it sequential from the first to the last in order? Or is it priority from the most important to the least important? (Or the other way around?) Or is it that the bullets are just related in some way. When most people look at such a long bullet list like the one above it's only natural to assume (whether consciously or not) that the last bullet may be of lesser importance than items higher up on list. In this case the last item, "Iraq regime has WMD capability," looks almost as if it were a parenthetical addition following the two-line acronym-filled bullet (number nine out of ten if you're counting) on "forces in Turkey" placed above it. WMDs, of course, would apparently move up the bulleted-list chain on future PowerPoint decks in Washington.

In the Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Edward Tufte, citing the 1998 Harvard Business Review article ("Strategic Stories: How 3M is Reviewing Business Planning"), suggests that bulleted lists "can make us stupid" because bullet lists (1) are too generic, (2) they leave important relationships unspecified, and (3) key assumptions are left vague at best. These briefing slides seem like pretty good examples of the kind of "documents" we should avoid subjecting our audiences to.

Bullet outlines dilute thought, says, Tufte. Certainly if we are going to make a document to be left behind as a handout we have to do better than printing out slides of bulleted outlines. Says Tufte:

"Instead of showing a long sequence of tiny information fragments on slides, and instead of dumping those slides onto paper,report writers should have the courtesy to write a real report (which might also be handed out at a meeting) and address audiences as serious people. PP templates are a lazy and ridiculous way to format printed reports." (Emphasis mine.)
[base ']Äì Edward Tufte, The Conitive Style of PowerPoint

Above: POTUS = President of the United States. SECDEF = Secretary of Defense. The first bullet reads much differently if it is written "George Bush/Donald Rumsfeld directed effort; limited to a very small group."

I am not arguing with the content of the briefing slides, there are plenty of sites for that. I am saying that the way in which it was presented is something that we ourselves should avoid doing at all cost. Presenting paper documents like this [base ']Äî which violate rule after rule of good document design and good writing [base ']Äî will obfuscate our message, not clarify it.

You will need this: List of acronyms used in War Planning Slides (PDF).

Thanks to my buddy Les in Australia for the heads up on these slides.

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 04:56:38 GMT

Making a presentation in 3 minutes.

I am a huge fan of TED and truly appreciate their efforts to share their presentations with the rest of the world. Here are a couple of very short TED presentations (only three minutes each) which you will enjoy. Both have good content, a simple and important message, and each presenter uses visuals that evoke emotions. The presentations are not perfect; I think you could offer up several tips to each of these brilliant men that would help them the next time they do a short presentation with visuals. Still, the short presentations provide another chance to learn. Let's look first at the presentation by Richard St. John, author of Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and Rich: Spike's Guide to Success. (The title of chapter one of the book is "My Apologies for the Title). Watch the video below or here on the TED site.

Richard St. John: Why do people succeed?

Richard St. John's visuals complemented his talk pretty well. The simple graphics are the same ones used in his book. The playful nature of his visuals and his delivery are consistent with the look and feel of his book as well. The single biggest thing that would have improved his presentation is the use of a small remote so that he could keep his eyes on the audience and his hands and eyes off his PowerBook. The addition of a remote is a simple thing, yet it is the one change that makes a huge difference in one's ability to free themselves from the PC and the podium and connect with the audience.

Dean Ornish: The world now eats, lives and dies like [people] in the U.S.

Dr. Ornish's talk is at its best when he highlights the growing obesity problem using the US map. This kind of visual makes people sit up in their chairs and go "wow, this really is a growing problem!" Then the next image of the "devolution of humans" really hits home. The graphic makes people laugh, but they also get the seriousness of the problem (Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying). The audience got the doctor's message: (1) Diet and life-style are the leading cause of many cardiovascular diseases, (2) the problem in the US is getting worse not better,(3) the problem is spreading to other parts of the world as they abandon traditional diets, (4) an "Asian diet" is best for preventing many kinds of diseases, yet (5) other parts of the world are becoming as unhealthy as Americans. Watch his talk below or on the TED site here. Dr. Ornish is the author of several health books like this one.

The presentation would have been even better if the bullets were broken into several different visuals. It takes no more time to have three different visuals (slides) appear in order than it does to display a single slide with three bullet points.

You can easily imagine how the two slides above could be visually represented better in, say, six simple (and visual) slides that augmented the doctor's spoken word.

The doctor clearly got his message across while illustrating his point visually with these simple graphics.

[Presentation Zen]

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 09:44:17 GMT

Film explores the omnipresent PowerPoint culture in search of its philosophical potential.

A PZ reader yesterday pointed me to a very cool online video [base ']Äî a short film really [base ']Äî which many of you will surely enjoy. If you are interested in visual communication, PowerPoint/slides, and appreciate a good fix of irony, then you will love this creation from two very clever design students studying at the Linz Kunstuniversit[radical]§t, Clemens Kogler and Karo Szmit (narration by Andre Tschinder). Here's what Clemens says about the visual presentation called Le Grand Content:

Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent PowerPoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand 'association-chain-massacre'. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters.

Maybe I've just had too much coffee this morning (curse those ¬o100 refills at Starbucks!), but I find this short four-minute presentation absolutely brilliant (and hilarious). Watch below on Youtube, or go here to see the video directly on Clemens' site.

Read more about Le Grand content here. You'll also see many stills of the motion graphics used in the presentation (sample below).

You will see loads of diagrams in the presentation which they say were inspired by another very cool blog site called Indexed by Jennifer Hagy. The diagrams on Jennifer's site are not only amusing, but they may give you some ideas for presenting your own information in a more visual way. Definitely adding Indexed to my RSS feed.

[Presentation Zen]

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:27:39 GMT

Learning from the art of comics.

You know my philosophy: Keep reading and keep looking [base ']Äî we just never know where we'll find inspiration and knowledge if we open our eyes and go off the beaten path. If we embrace the "beginner's mind" and keep our mind "empty" then it's ready to accept anything for examination. It was in this spirit, then, that I purchased a book on (gulp) comics. I first heard of the book from Cliff Atkinson about two years ago. Dan Pink also mentioned the book in A Whole New Mind which I just read a few weeks ago. The book is called Understanding Comics: The invisible Art by Scott McCloud. I highly recommend that you get this book. Frankly, you're nuts if you don't add this book to your library. Seriously, stop what you are doing right now and buy this incredible book. I'm serious [base ']Äî do it right now. (I'll wait....) You back? Good. Believe it or not, many of the principles and ideas discussed in this wonderful and highly visual book parallel the art of presentation. Now, comics are not the same as a presentation enhanced by slideware, but if you read McCloud's book with an eye toward presentations or any other form of storytelling and graphic design, you will find many fundamental concepts and techniques that will surely help you think differently about the power of visual communication and the art of combining words and images. This book is not just for fans of comics [base ']Äî not by a long shot.

Amplification through simplification
McCloud explores many key concepts in his book. Chief among them from my point of view is the idea of "amplification through simplification." McCloud says that cartooning is "...a form of amplification through simplification" because the abstract images in comics are not so much the elimination of detail as much as they are an effort to focus on specific details. Says McCloud,

"By stripping down an image to essential 'meaning,' an artist can amplify that meaning..."
[base ']Äî Scott McCloud

McCloud says that "Cartooning is not just a way of drawing, it's a way of seeing! The ability of cartoons to focus our attention on an idea is I think an important part of their special power, both in comics and drawing in general." Specific applications will vary, of course, but we can apply the spirit of "amplification through simplification" to creative disciplines outside the art of comics.

A key feature of many comics is their visual simplicity. Yet, as McCloud reminds us, while casting an eye to the wonderful world of Japanese comics, "simple style does not necessitate simple story." Many people (outside of Japan) prejudge comics by their simple lines and forms as being necessarily simplistic and base, perhaps suitable for children and "the lazy," but not something that could possibly have depth and intelligence. Surely such a simple style found in comics can not be illustrating a complex story they say. However, if you visit coffee shops around Tokyo University [base ']Äî Japan's most elite university [base ']Äî you will see stacks and stacks of comics (Manga) on the shelves. There is nothing necessarily "stupid" about the genre of comics in Japan at all, in fact you'll find "brainiacs" in all shapes and sizes reading comics here.

Still, most people in, say, the U.S. have a visceral reaction to seeing comics and fail to understand them as anything but "low" art at best. Perhaps this reflects a hole in the education system in the U.S. Perhaps visual literacy needs to be taught along with other fundamentals. In any event, the situation today is that most people have not been exposed to the idea of making an idea or a visual stronger by stripping it down to its essence. Less always equals less in most people's eyes. If we apply this visual illiteracy to the world of presentations, you can imagine the frustration a young "enlightened" professional must feel when her boss looks over her presentation visuals the day before her big presentation and says "No good. Too simple. Good lord! You have not said anything with these slides! Where are your bullet points!? Where's the company logo!? You're wasting space [base ']Äî put some data in there!!!" She tries to explain that the slides are not the presentation but that she is the presentation and that the "points" will be coming from her mouth. She tries to explain that the slides contain a delicate balance of text and images designed to play a supportive yet powerful role in helping her amplify her message. She attempts to remind her boss that they also have strong, detailed documentation for the client and that slides and documents are not the same. But her boss will have none of it. The boss is not happy until the "PowerPoint deck" looks like "normal PowerPoints," you know, the kind used by "serious people."

Applying the amplification-through-simplification concept
In this 2004 cliff Atkinson interview with Scott McCloud, McCloud says that it is hard to give people concrete advice on how to use PowerPoint because each case is different. Nonetheless, it would be wise he says, for us to take advantage of "amplification through simplification" as much as possible. Beyond this, McCloud offers excellent advice for presenters:

"...trust in those aspects of what you have to say that excite you. Trust that they will excite other people. And try to distill for yourself what it is that seems urgent and potent in your topic. Have faith in your own passion for the subject. And if you have none, then consider a change of career. If you can isolate the aspects of your subject which genuinely excite you, then that can be the fulcrum for any number of effective points."
[base ']Äî Scott McCloud

I am not suggesting that you become an artist or that you should draw your own images. But I am suggesting that you can learn a lot about how to present images and words together by exploring the so-called "low art" of comics. In fact, although presentation visuals were surely the furthest thing from McCloud's mind when he wrote the book, we can learn far more about effective communication for the conceptual age from McCloud's book than we can from any book on PowerPoint. For example, early in the book McCloud builds a definition of comics and finally arrives with this, a definition he admits is not written in stone:

"Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer."
[base ']Äî Scott McCloud

It is easy to imagine, with some tweaking, how this could be applied to other storytelling media and presentation contexts as well. We do not have a good definition for "live presentation with slideware" but a killer presentation may indeed contain visuals which are comprised of "juxtaposed pictorial and other images." And many good presentations certainly have elements of sequence designed to "convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response."

And speaking of learning from comics
Checkout Wally Woods's 22 Panels That Always Work. Print this and hang it up near your desk for inspiration and guidance. The 22 panels were guides for comics illustrators, but they may also challenge you or inspire you to experiment with the way you display your visual information. For example, an application of "Big Head" and "Extreme Closeup" in my world is to make use of the entire screen and when possible making the slide space seem larger than it is. This effect can be achieved when you "bleed" images off the screen. With the ubiquity of digital still cameras and inexpensive-but-good stock photography there is no reason that one has to keep images tiny on screen.

Above. On the left is an actual slide used in one of my recent talks. On the right is the more "usual" way of presenting the text and image together.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have incorporated Dan Pink's "aptitudes for the conceptual age" in to part of my presentations on presentation design. To introduce Pink's aptitudes into my talk visually I first made the slide on the left (below). Yes, I know it's not very "visual" but I thought it would serve to summarize Pink's main points in one frame. Now, my application of the idea of "amplification through simplification" is different than what McCloud was talking about in Comics, but the basic idea is there. In some ways the revised slide on the right is more complex, but from the point of view of its Gestalt, it's more powerful, simple, and easy to grasp quickly. The first bulleted slide has 40 words; revised slide has 24. The revised slide is by no means a work of art or even the best possible graphical representation of the six key aptitudes, but it is far more visually supportive of my verbal message. And it was simple to do.

(Left) Yuck. (Right) Not great, but much better.

Scott McCloud: The Zen Master of comics
At the end of the book, McCloud gives us some simple, Zen-like wisdom. He's talking about writers, artists, and the art of comics, but this is good advice to live by no matter where our creative talents my lie. "All that's needed," he says, "...is the desire to be heard. The will to learn. And the ability to see." This to me is the essence of his book.

When you get right down to it, it always comes back to desire, the willingness to learn, and the ability to really see. Many of us have the desire, it's the learning and seeing that's the hard part. McCloud says that in order for us to understand comics we need to "...clear our minds of all preconceived notions about comics. Only by starting from scratch can we discover the full range of possibilities comics offer." The same could be said for presentation design. Only by approaching presentations and presentation design with a completely open mind can we see that the options are virtually endless. It is just a matter of seeing.

LINKS
* Scott McCloud's website
[base ']Ä¢ Scott McCloud's "The Making Comics 50 State Tour"
* How to make illustrations even if you can't draw (Eirikso.com)
* How to avoid making boring presentations(Eirikso.com)
* Wally Wood's 22 Panels That Always Work
*Can't stop laughing at this PPT-related cartoon (what's that say about me?)

[Presentation Zen]

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 03:19:21 GMT

Your moment of Zen.

Thanks to Zach Graham for sharing his photos (this one from Tokyo).

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 05:13:49 GMT

Is it broken?. Seth Godin made a nice little presentation at GEL 2006. I like it. I think you will too. In case you are wondering, the name of the font Seth used in his slides is called Shatterboxx. This font is perfect... [Presentation Zen]

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:37:20 GMT

Google and eBay to tailor ads to every customer. Technology: eBay signs up Google to help create advertisements individually tailored to each of its customers. [Guardian Unlimited]

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:11:47 GMT

Cleaning up our act. Here's some good general advice for us, and it's even based on a little bit of research:[I]f you want people to understand [you] better, then get that stuff off the screen...Clean it up and get it off because it is... [Presentation Zen]