The Promise and Perils of Desktop Slideware

This is a short paper for IAT 814 at SFU Surrey (SIAT) ...

The Promise and Perils of Desktop Slideware

Introduction

This paper deviates slightly from the assigned task of providing a critical review of a high quality paper from the visualization research literature. Instead, it focuses on the consumer level knowledge representation and information transfer issues associated with the use of presentation technologies such as PowerPoint, also known as slideware. The paper does not explicitly focus on the minutiae of information visualization techniques as outlined by Ware (2004). Instead it critically reviews the macro issues of visual information presentation associated with PowerPoint, a computer-based desktop presentation tool that is used an estimated 30 million times a day by end-users in all parts of the world (Keller, 2005).

PowerPoint was designed in 1984 and was later purchased by Microsoft to become a key component of its Office suite of business communication tools. It featured a set of templates, colors, and fonts for creating horizontally oriented pages that could be projected like 35mm slides using a video projector. The innovation of PowerPoint was its consumer focused tool set that provided an easy-to-use design interface and a host of projection techniques that included builds, fades, and wipes that had been difficult or expensive to achieve previously with 35mm slides.

PowerPoint was an early example of the killer app, a software tool that embodied the qualities that Ivan Illich called conviviality (Illich, 1975). Illich believed that people needed tools to make the most of the energy and imagination each had. The popularity and growing use of PowerPoint since its invention could be deemed a demonstration of its conviviality. However, since 2001 critiques of PowerPoint have begun to appear that bring into question the actual conviviality of this ubiquitous tool. Writing in the Annals of Business section of The New Yorker in May 2001, Ian Parker wrote, “PowerPoint, which can be found on two hundred and fifty million computers around the world, is software you impose on other people (Parker, 2001).”

The Perils of PowerPoint

Parker (2001) went on the to critique the structural biases inherent in PowerPoint from the perspective of its influence on the organization and presentation of information, noting that PowerPoint “edits ideas,” and that it is “almost surreptitiously, a business manual … with an opinion – an oddly pedantic, prescriptive opinion – about the way we should think (Parker, pg. 76).”  What Parker was referencing was the sequential format of bullet points that PowerPoint has popularized, making it easy for speakers and presenters to organize their thoughts on screens and then mechanically lead an audience through the key messages they wish to communicate. The AutoContent Wizard in particular, was seen by Parker to be a recipe for business presentations that in many cases needed minimal factual additions to make it produce a finished presentation. The apparent polish with which PowerPoint presented information Parker noted, lulled audiences into accepting even fragile business information as fact, a concern voiced by Edward Tufte in his article in Wired Magazine (Tufte, 2003b).

Tufte’s Wired Magazine critique of PowerPoint is a shortened version of his longer essay titled, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (Tufte, 2003a). In the short version for Wired Magazine Tufte used colorful rhetoric to capture the attention of readers, using the power of the printed page and his superior command of language to outline the failings of PowerPoint and to make his central point that PowerPoint presentations “elevate format over content.”

What Tufte did in his article was use the power of prose to demonstrate what he believed could not be done using the sequential slide-based format – convey a message clearly, accurately, and completely within the limitations of the medium. He noted that a typical slide contained 40 words, which was about eight seconds of silent reading. Thus, a complete presentation required many slides that audiences were compelled to follow sequentially at the presenter’s pace.

Tufte emphasized that the sequential format of slideware introduced two major problems with information representation. The sequencing of information throughout a presentation on separate slides made it difficult for an audience to understand context and evaluate relationships between information presented. Tufte believes that visual reasoning works best when relevant information is presented side by side, a condition that is often difficult to emulate in PowerPoint, especially when data intense tables are required.  PowerPoint has resolution limitations that inhibit the ability of presenters to display complex tables on slides, and worse makes it almost impossible to display side-by-side comparison tables.

Tufte’s ideas on the presentation of quantitative information were expressed in detail in his 1983 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Tufte, 1983). The baseline concepts introduced in that work are those of graphical excellence and graphical integrity. Many of the concepts are relevant today to the display of information using slideware, and would make a valuable appendix to the user manuals for PowerPoint and its analogs from other software vendors. Tufte notes that graphical displays should:

• Show the data
• Induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else
• Avoid distorting what the data have to say
• Present many numbers in a small space
• Make large data sets coherent
• Encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
• Reveal that data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure
• Serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration
• Be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set (Tufte, 1983)

Tufte’s 1983 book pre-dated the design of PowerPoint software and was aimed at graphic designers and publishers who produced complex information for print. The limitations of the 1983 work and its recommendations for graphic display were further underscored in Tufte’s 2003 essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (Tufte, 2003a). Tufte’s background is in the display of graphical information for the print medium, a medium that affords relatively high-resolution display. A central point in his 2003 work is the limitation for information presentation inherent in PowerPoint that can be attributed to its extremely low resolution.

With low resolution comes dangerous tendencies for information display and knowledge representation according to Tufte – “over-generalizations, imprecise statements, slogans, lightweight evidence, abrupt and thinly argued claims (Tufte, 2003a).” The article outlines examples and provides sample slides that demonstrate the inadequacies of PowerPoint for the presentation of statistical data. Through analysis of newspaper, magazine, and slide-based data, Tufte noted that data graphics on PowerPoint templates showed only 10% to 20% of the information found in typical new graphics.

Another criticism leveled by Tufte is that “bullet outlines dilute thought.” Because the default format of most slideware is the bullet list, users typically use this format and find themselves confined to short phrases to represent important information. In worse cases, nested hierarchies of bullets resemble computer code and impede comprehension by audience members. Worse still is that bulleted lists leave relationships unspecified, and sometimes even confuse membership, sequence, or priority within highly nested displays.

In his worst-case example of bulleted data presentation, Tufte used the actual NASA slides prepared by engineers assigned to diagnose the potential impact of the launch debris that hit the space shuttle Columbia’s wings on take off from Cape Canaveral. Based upon the manner in which the data was presented in PowerPoint for analysis and decision by senior NASA staff, Tufte believed he could demonstrate the flaw in the decision-making process that lead flight control staff to believe that the shuttle could safely re-enter the atmosphere without the burn-through of the wing sections that were damaged by heat tile loss on launch from the Cape. The implications of this argument and the clarity with which Tufte demonstrates the logical flaws in the NASA PowerPoint presentation makes a powerful case for judicious use of presentation slideware when mission-critical data is presented for evaluation.

It is Tufte’s contention that the metaphor that drives PowerPoint is that of the software corporation. It is this metaphor that has given us the tightly nested bulleted lists and highly structured modular and sequential slide-based formats.  He believes that PowerPoint is suited best for marketing and sales pitches that depend upon messages and slogans that can be delivered in a few words. A better metaphor for presentation according to Tufte is good teaching, with its core ideas of explanation, reasoning, questioning, content, evidence, and credible authority – concepts that are at odds with the default market-pitch format offered by PowerPoint and other slideware.

Summary

In his critique of PowerPoint as a visual presentation tool, Edward Tufte presented well-reasoned and clearly supported arguments and examples that should provide users of slideware software with a cautionary viewpoint as they plan and execute their own information presentations. His notion of good teaching as being the metaphor to emulate for information display or knowledge transfer, provides a challenge to users of interactive media and presentation software tools.

Clearly the hardware and software tools at our disposal have not yet reached the level of sophistication required to achieve the kinds of presentation in electronic format that is currently achievable in high-resolution print. Nonetheless, the core concepts for visual data display that Tufte noted as early as his 1983 work must remind us that in visual presentations, graphical excellence and graphical integrity are the goals to which we must aspire.

References

Illich, I. (1975). Tools for conviviality.   Retrieved Jan 12, 2005, from http://www.incae.ac.cr/ES/clacds/proyectos/naciones_digitales/construyendo_escenarios/documentos/Illich%20Chapters%201_2_3.pdf

Keller, J. (2005, January 5).  Killing me Microsoftly with PowerPoint. The Chicago Tribune.

Parker, I. (2001). Absolute PowerPoint: Can a software package edit our thoughts. The New Yorker, p. 76.

Tufte, E. R. (1983). The visual display of quantitative information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.

Tufte, E. R. (2003a). The cognitive style of PowerPoint. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.

Tufte, E. R. (2003b). PowerPoint is evil. PowerPoint corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely. Wired Magazine, 11(9).

Ware, C. (2004). Information visualization: Perception for design. New York: NY: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

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