|
Survey Shows How to Stop Annoying Audiences
With Bad PowerPoint
By Dave Paradi
Also by Dave Paradi:
Using Copyrighted Material In Your Presentation
Choosing Colors For Your Presentation
Slides
Introduction
Rating the Annoying Elements
Themes in Audience Comments
Scope of the Problem
Conclusions
|
 About
Dave Paradi
Dave Paradi is known as The Office Technology
Lifeguard because he rescues people from "Death
by PowerPoint" and other electronic sins. His articles,
special reports and books help you quickly and easily leverage
the technology you already own to save time and make money.
Get your free 5+1 day Leveraging Microsoft Office course
with 20 tips on Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook and
more great tips every two weeks by signing up at his web
site:
Comunicate
Using Technology
|
Introduction
Too many experts look at PowerPoint from the
technical perspective – what
features do people use and how to use the features. My recent survey
took a different perspective. For the first time, the audience
perspective on PowerPoint presentations was considered. In September
of 2003, I asked 159 people what they found most annoying about
the PowerPoint presentations that they see. The results of this
survey have important insights for presenters at all levels.
Back
Rating the Annoying Elements
The respondents to this Web-based survey came from all levels
in a variety of organizations and in different countries. I asked
each person to select the top three annoying elements from a list
of elements and then asked for extra items in a free-form question.
The top things that audiences find annoying about bad PowerPoint
presentations, with the percentage of people citing this element
are as follows.
| The speaker read the slides to us |
60.4% |
| Text so small I couldn't read it |
50.9% |
| Full sentences instead of bullet points |
47.8% |
| Slides hard to see because of color choice |
37.1% |
| Moving/flying text or graphics |
24.5% |
| Annoying use of sounds |
22.0% |
| Overly complex diagrams or charts |
22.0% |
It is clear from the responses that the most annoying aspect of
bad PowerPoint slides is the text, not the graphics or multimedia.
It is important that a presenter focus on getting short, relevant
and readable text on the slides and add to each point with what
they say. Simply reading the slides that are jammed with text to
the audience is an insult to the audience and the results indicate
that by doing this, presenters are severely damaging the message
they are trying to deliver.
Back
Themes in Audience Comments
Three common themes emerged from the free-form comments:
- Poor Preparation of the Presentation – People are very
annoyed when the presenter does not even think about the structure
of the presentation and simply copies the text of a report onto
slides. PowerPoint slides should support the message, not substitute
for the presenter or for a more detailed handout. Presenters
need to connect with the audience instead of hiding behind the
slides.
- Balance of Slide Elements – People find too much text
or too much fancy graphics and multimedia a big turn off. These
two extremes do not work well. A balanced approach is called
for – text to give context for the audience’s understanding
of what the presenter will next be speaking about, and graphics
and multimedia to add flavor to the text.
- Not Knowing How to Use the Technology – If presenters
are going to use technology during a presentation, they should
learn how to set it up, start it up so it looks professional
and smoothly move between the slides. Awkward usage of PowerPoint
and presentation technology was mentioned a number of times as
detracting from the message being delivered.
Back
Scope of the Problem
I also asked what percentage of the PowerPoint
presentations that people see suffer from these problems. A surprisingly
high percentage
of presentations suffer from the problems that annoy audience members.
A total of 41.5% of the respondents said that more than 40% of
the presentations they see contain annoying elements. This indicates
how wide-spread the problem is and how much of an issue this is
becoming for organizations. Microsoft’s statistics indicate
that there are 400 million copies of Microsoft Office installed
and there are 30 million PowerPoint presentations done each day.
The increased reliance on the PowerPoint tool for communicating
a message has not worked as well as hoped given the results of
the survey. It is clear that many presenters need help structuring
their presentation, especially the crucial text aspect.
Back
Conclusions
Organizations must take steps to properly train their staff in
the use of PowerPoint to present information in meetings. It is
clear that the tool is a good one, it is just the use of the tool
that is at issue. Too many presenters have used PowerPoint slides
as a substitute for themselves and think that the slides are the
presentation instead of the slides supporting the presentation
that they must deliver.
A clear structure to the presentation should be created, research
done to support the key points and an analysis of the audience
to take their needs into account. When creating the slides, presenters
must only put the key points on the slide and add to the point
with the depth of information that they share verbally. This will
lead to more effective presentations and less wasted time. Organizations
who find that their staff are primarily reading reports and calling
them presentations may want to eliminate many of the presentations
and simply distribute the report electronically for others to review
on their own time. This would free up large amounts of time for
professionals to attend to higher value work.
Back
© 2004, Dave Paradi.
This image shows only a fraction
of the seamless textures available as part of the Background
Texture Collection - all actual textures are 100 x
100 pixels and completely seamless so that you can
tile them!
Learn
more about the Background Texture Collection...
Download a Free Show - You
can download a free multimedia demonstration which explains
myriad ways to use these backgrounds here.
(2.37 mb - works on Microsoft Windows 95 through XP)
|
|
