Clear and present danger

Some innovations succeed to the point of redefining the problem they tackle. Some give way to better ones, or having served their time, fade into the section of the graveyard reserved for the no-longer-needed. Yet others fail flagrantly, and quickly: tagged as laughable, or a good idea poorly executed, or ill timed. A broad consensus rules.

Surely it ought to be impossible for an innovation to suffer all of these fates at once? To be a ubiquitous necessity, a permanent, empowering right, a watershed; and yet, a scourge, a threat, and an evil joke. Yet that unlikely status of divider-in-chief has attached itself to Microsoft’s PowerPoint, the class-defining presentation software. 

All these fates, bar one: it is not fading. According to a decades old (unverified) estimate, 30 million presentations are made every day, and take 15 million person-hours to view (15 million people for one hour, for example). 

To excavate the deep design of this division, we visit both sides, though not to broker a peace, and we examine precedents and look at human nature for answers. Start by re-emphasising its sheer prevalence, hidden by its everydayness.

((Clockwise from top) The PowerPoint master slide template; summary of the Gettysburg Address, originally a three-minute speech expanded satirically into a 10-minute slideshow by Peter Norvig; the baffling PowerPoint slide shown to US commanders during the war in Afghanistan; a pseudograph as a slide backed by appropriate fonts can look overly friendly, often disarming the audience to the presenter’s ideas

At work and play, peace and war, schools, colleges, businesses, armies and governments are in its thrall. When, in 2001, McKinsey presented to PM A B Vajpayee its case for infrastructure spending, newspaper reports actually referred to PowerPoint by name. In 2013, Mickey Arthur, Australian cricket coach dropped his vice captain and three others key players from his Test side for failing to submit presentations on team strategy. Schoolchildren are taught it early, and often are required to submit project work as presentations.

Articles denouncing PowerPoint often quote the US military, which seems to both rely on it and jeer at it. An article by a US military officer called it ‘Dumb-dumb Bullets”. A slide picturing America's Afghanistan strategy has become a widely shared joke — the head of US forces famously said, "When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war." Another general called it an “internal threat”. Yet both generals use PowerPoint. 

To the point, and typical of the criticism, is the second General’s remark that PowerPoint is "dangerous” because of the “illusion of understanding and… control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."  

Here’s the holy pope of graphic information visualisation, Edward Tufte:  “… the PowerPoint style…disrupts, dominates, and trivialises content. PowerPoint presentations… resemble a school play—very loud, very slow, and very simple.”

It’s fatal simplicity that Tufte’s talking about. PowerPoint slides were blamed for the vague information that led to the approval of faulty surface tiles on the ill-fated space shuttle  Columbia. A commission led by him concurred: written notes, photographs and data were recommended as both more effective and more efficient. Senior US army officers say that PowerPoint is appropriate for those press briefings where the goal is to not convey information—“hypnotising chickens” is the operative phrase. And at Harvard, a peer-reviewed, experimental study, found PowerPoint no better, and arguably worse, than a talk without presentation aids. 

The Defence, or not quite

Much of the criticism of PowerPoint springs from its strengths. In response, one can argue that any tool can be misused. Its naff graphics and overwhelming popularity make it an easy target.

The presentation itself is not new—as film slides, or overhead projection. But with its reincarnation as PowerPoint, came an unprecedented level of ease, and impact. PowerPoint is a watershed in human communication, as much as the open web. It democratised communicative agency: a shy 23-year-old accountant could plausibly take on a boardroom.

The crisp fonts, graphics, and finish and the ease with which they could be combined weren’t new either: desktop publishing had seen to that. Both give even half-baked thoughts the legitimacy of the printed word. But sounds, video and magnification let the presenter dominate the darkened room. 

But

In truth, PowerPoint leverages  the evolutionary primacy of sight over hearing, and especially to detect motion. It’s primordial. If it moves, I watch it, to eat it or be eaten. But the monster must be fed: next bullet, next slide, and the next. Presentations steal our attention, but misuse it, leaving a hollow where an idea  might have been.

The purely visual, false sense of authority that PowerPoint gives (even to specious logic) is hard to unsee. Bullets and numbered points give a surround-sound of insight. Boxes group incompatible concepts into buckets; and the arrows that connect them don't just look like they convey causality. No, they are causal, they must be. Slippery word play can take the place of genuine idea formation: use the right font, and bomb the slide. Don’t speak.

This is the halo effect at work: what looks good must be intelligent and true. In a well-studied experiment, when a well-groomed man in a suit tells a group of walkers that it's okay to cross the road even when the sign says “Don't Walk”, they follow him. 

But the halo effect can cut both ways. We also trust the person with better language, diction and even better handwriting. That’s a evolved bias too, rooted in the idea that language, articulation and writing took time and effort to acquire, as did the confidence to stand before an audience. They are heuristics for genuine learning. Democratisation can wait.

PowerPoint, in contrast, is the death of rhetoric, unconstrained language and pictures— together, the most potent and ancient ways to convey the complexity of the world.

Finally:
 

TIPS FOR PRESENTERS
 

• Treat your presentation as the live performance that it is.
• You are the presentation. 
• Slides are a dispensable aid! 

-- Best used for vital pictures. 

-- Very simple ideas.

Thanks for listening.

Itu Chaudhuri runs Itu Chaudhuri Design, a design and branding firm, in New Delhi; itu@icdindia.com