PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused? Let us know your thoughts and you could win!
May 12, 2008 – 1:04 pmAh, PowerPoint – love it or hate it, PowerPoint, and apps like it, are here to stay.
We’ve all seen brilliant presentations but more often than not we’re recoiling as the first slide pops up on screen… that moment when you realize you’re in for a long trudge through bullet point hell. You know the slides - a dozen (or two) bullet points, a garish assortment of fonts (sized either far too big or much too small) with some cheesy clip-art inserted for good measure.
Is PowerPoint just inherently flawed? Does it make it too easy to be bad? How do those moments of brilliance emerge from the same tool that generates countless slides of unwatchable content every day?
Share Your Opinion
We’d love to hear your thoughts on PowerPoint - more specifically we’d be interested in hearing your answer to the following question:
PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused?
No need to write an essay, 300 words or less is great. Imagery is encouraged – you could even consider making a short Powerpoint presentation and putting it up on something like SlideShare. Add your response to the comments below, or if you have your own blog, add your response there and place a permalink to your post in the comments below.
VizThink Webinar Series
At the end of the month we’ll be continuing our VizThink webinar series with a conversation about PowerPoint (& electronic presentations in general) featuring presentation design experts. Your responses will be a key part of the discussion during the webinar.
Win a Copy of “Beyond Bullet Points”
To thank everyone for their thoughts and posts we’re offering up a copy of Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points
To be eligible posts must be up by midnight May 25th June 12th, 2008 and tagged “VizThinkPPT”. We’ll be sure to review every post that we see (through trackbacks, comments and a Google Blog search monitor). The winner will be announced during the webinar later this month (will be announced via the blog)
Thanks in advance, we look forward to reading all your thoughts and insights!
17 Responses to “PowerPoint: A powerful tool poorly used or a poor tool overused? Let us know your thoughts and you could win!”
It’s funny that people don’t blame word for crappy documents or Corel Draw for clipart… wait they don’t right?
I used to work at a design firm 10 years ago that once they found out they could make PDFs go full screen made all their presentations in Quark Express. It didn’t help them make better presenattions.
I already have a copy of Cliff’s book. It is good.
By Bryce Johnson on May 12, 2008
As a long time client of mine says, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
It takes wisdom and discernment to choose the right tool used in the right way to achieve a specific purpose. Don’t blame the tool, but don’t make it the only tool in your toolbox.
By Jamie Nast on May 13, 2008
FOR SUCCESSFUL POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS, LOOK TO CARTOONISTS
By Austin Kleon on May 13, 2008
Here’s my contribution. I did this for an event called ‘Ignite Seattle’ a couple of months ago.
Bad PowerPoint! Bad!
Bad!
By Dick Carlson on May 14, 2008
So that’s where it comes from! A friend insisted on using a PDF to make a presentation for a job he was applying for and I couldn’t understand why on earth he was doing. He is a graphic designer. He didn’t get the job.
By Dan R on May 16, 2008
Content is always the king…
…whatever the tool.
Tools don’t maketh an interesting presentation…
A universal, easy to use yet powerful tool such as powerpoint, has been abused by users in churning out thoughtless and boring presentations.
This tool has everything that any elearning tool can give…
…but if the hand that maketh the presentation, does not use its grey matter, then the output would be as dull as the colour grey, no matter what tool.
By Jaideep Jagasia on May 17, 2008
Verily agreed: On Powerpoint
By Neil Cohn on May 21, 2008
PowerPoint is one of the most commonly used — and abused — communication tools in business. But I think that the root of the problem people have with PowerPoint is much deeper than the tool. Here’s my take on why PowerPoint rules the business world.
By Dave Gray on May 22, 2008
As others have said, content is king, and you can’t blame the tool for lousy content. However, as useful as PowerPoint can be, it’s not the powerful tool that it could and should be by now.
One of the reasons PowerPoint became successful is its ease of use. It automatically creates a new presentation when you open the program. You click on the New Slide button and start typing your title and bullet points. With little effort (well, for some people even this is probably a lot of effort, but…), you’ve created a “presentation.” If the default setting were a blank slide, people would be forced to think (at least a little) about what they’re doing before subjecting the world to ‘death by paragraphs masquerading as bullet points.’ Now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, though, I don’t think there’s any way to go back.
However, considering how long PowerPoint has been around, it should be much more advanced than it is now. It’s really not that different than it was 15 years ago, except it has more animations and 3-D elements. If PowerPoint had advanced at the rate that, say, Flash did in about a quarter of the time, we would be able to create sophisticated, interactive presentations with movie-like effects and frame-precision animation that would allow presenters to stop the “movie” and talk to the audience, giving presenters the best of both worlds: dynamic, visually exciting segments (they would no longer simply be “slides) with the ability to stop the show and talk to the audience to make that personal connection that a movie alone cannot do - even if it stars an Academy-Award-winning, former vice-president.
That would make PowerPoint harder to use and maybe less abused.
By Robert Newcombe on Jun 2, 2008
PowerPoint is definitely a cool tool that is abused easily and often.
“Word” people botch presentations by using the screen as a note pad rather than a canvas. “Visual” people don’t always know how to add words so the “word” people remember their points.
People also mistakenly use the same word::picture density for sales presentations as for presenting technical information.
A great opportunity for us!
By Beth Najberg on Jun 2, 2008
If there is a choice to be made in this discussion, I err towards a poor tool overused.
We all seem to be in consensus that it’s the creator of the presentation and the content being presented that is most to blame for “Bad PPT”. This, of course, is what make it easier for people like us to stand out.
I do agree with Robert thought that Powerpoint’s stagnancy or lack of evolution is “it’s” creators fault. I would venture to say that nearly all of us posting or reading this blog are using Keynote simply due to it being a hands-down better “tool” for us as presentation creators.
One thing I have learned with templates is that you have to make it easier for people to use it “right” than wrong. As we complete brand overhauls for companies, inherently we end up developing a presentation template. The templates we’ve been producing limit the field for “text”. Additionally, we “modulize” the presentation. That allows us the opportunity to include some Dynamic Content (Opening, Closing and core Brand Messaging). Making our clients look better, without them having to create it all themselves.
By Brian Ramos on Jun 3, 2008
I would say in short - It is a powerful tool, poorly used.
By Jitendra Madhav on Jun 5, 2008
Powerpoint is a powerful tool that is misused it is also a old fashioned tired tool. Why use software that you have to install on your desktop. The world is moving to the cloud so should your presentations. Moving your presentations to the cloud also allows you to do things you could never do with powerpoint, share them and include rich media. Unfortunately misuses of online presentation tools is just as prevalent as the desktop tools. We need more education, education in presentation strategies is the only way to cure the bullet point.
By bryan thatcher on Jun 27, 2008
The problem isn’t with any tool, it is with the user of the tool. When typists became “desk top publishers” the quality of published material went down the tubes. This is also true of PowerPoint, because you can use the tool, doesn’t mean you should. There are many skills underdeveloped before people are let loose to bore us to death with protracted Excel, pie charts, etc in the guise of PowerPoint. Design - typography - visualisation - information mapping. PPT developers should be “trained” in these skills and if they don’t come up to muster, give them something else to do.
By Theresa on Jul 2, 2008