Billboards: A Message of Simplicity for PowerPoint

The last time you went to a talk, you most likely sat through a seemingly endless array of PowerPoint slides – unless of course you were attending something from Elliott Masie or Edward Tufte.  How much of the presentation content could you recall the next day?  Despite the fact that seeing and hearing information is allegedly more beneficial, retention isn’t occurring.  Why?  PowerPoint has made us stupid.

Of course, there are great examples of very impactful PowerPoint presentations, but on the whole, there is a lot of laziness surrounding PowerPoint.  Whether the presenter is being lazy about their presentation design and simply doing a brain dump into bulleted lists in the PowerPoint default template or the audience tunes out the presenter only to stare at her slides while thinking, “They’ll e-mail the deck to us afterward, so I really don’t have to pay attention”, the message is not being sent and received.

Fixing how PowerPoint is used

How can we resolve this issue?  From the audience, you can focus on the presenter, referring to their slides only when they do.  Think about what is being said, how the information is being conveyed, what you are learning, and how you can process and share the information you are taking in.  While there will hopefully be great detail, stories, and intricacies, you should walk away with a simple, concise message.

If you are a presenter, first spend a bit of time as a designer.  As a classroom teacher or learning professional, you constantly think about how to deliver your content to your learners in the most understandable, meaningful manner.  Giving a PowerPoint presentation should be no different - time spent on designing before you start developing (or even opening PowerPoint) will pay off many times over when you get to the development stage.

One possible reason for the difficulties with PowerPoint is that it is too feature-rich of a program.  You can do animations, add videos, create graphs and format everything.  It’s easy to see how you can get lost in the things you can do as opposed to the things you should do.  A very effective way to counteract this with your presentation is to go slide-free.  While this can be counter-cultural for your audience, it allows you to focus on your message, ensuring you have a tight, understandable narrative that conveys your message.  If you do throw slides into the mix, think simple.  Tweet simple.  Billboard simple.

Simplicity

Billboards are typically viewed for six seconds.  That’s not much time to get your message across.  Think about your topic and what you’d communicate in that amount of time.  What’s important?  Most likely, the main point(s) of your hour-long presentation can probably be concisely communicated in that time allotment.  Rather than 30 slides at two minutes each, use the billboard mentality (not 600 slides at 6 seconds each) and think about how to convey your message simply.

The limitations imposed will help you think more creatively.  It will help you think more targeted.  It will help you use PowerPoint to enhance your presentation as opposed to having your deck stand on its own with you as the narrator for the synchronous session.