Response to Bad PowerPoint: The fault of PowerPoint users?

Donald Norman's comments on technology in general, though not PowerPoint specifically, is dead on:

Technology is not neutral. Technology has properties--affordances--that make it easier to do some activities, harder to do others: The easier ones get done, the harder ones neglected. Each has its constraints, preconditions, and side effects that impose requirements and changes on the things with which it interacts, be they other technology, people, or human society at large. Finally, each technology poses a mind-set, a way of thinking about it and the activities to which it is relevant, a mind-set that soon pervades those touched by it, often unwittingly, often unwillingly. The more successful and widespread the technology, the greater its impact upon the thought patterns of those who use it, and consequently, the greater its impact upon all of society. Technology is not neutral, it dominates.

Norman, Donald A., Things that Make Us Smart, Perseus Books, 1993, p. 243

-- Dave Nash (email), August 22, 2006

What are the causes of presentations?

Put another way, what are the causes of learning? What quality of content should be acceptable? What consumption skills and methods should we develop? Which mash-ups of presentor and consumer cognitive styles demand which skills and methods? The integrity question ET discusses in the essay above may seem obvious, but I can think of at least one instance where I found the paper, the only paper, a widely read paper, that centered around exactly the five points that a lecturer discussed in class but, judging by the explanation in the paper, the professor may have misinterpreted, or at least mis-spoke in a very complicated fashion. Should students systematically demand citations from their lecturers? They can ask, but a demand is entirely different. A demand presumes some standing; what standing do students have when tuition is less than 10% of the school's revenue?

I find myself presented with many similar questions these days, having introduced podcasting to lectures at my medical school. I am approached regularly by both students and faculty, even people relating questions from their friends and relatives, on the value or intransigence of podcasting. We presumably test, at least in the sciences, actual facts learned. Considering the textbooks, noteservice, handouts, PowerPoint slides, the Internet, Google, Wikipedia, and now recorded lectures, why would a professor even need to be in the equation if test results were to demonstrate they are not as good as other means? This seems to be a vastly understudied question. Particularly interesting was one assertion that we effectively ran the first two years of medical school last year, after evacuating to Houston, with all of fifteen full-time faculty members.

Now, surely, no one feels that is a good way to run a medical school, but it does beg some questions about what elements are necessary to a presentation. Some students even argue, indeed they conduct their lives, on the belief that pausible, rewindable, play-at-1.5-speedable audio, in conjunction with slides, is more time-efficient than going to class. Combine all this with the textbooks, Google, Wikipedia, learning objectives, Kaplan Q-bank, etc, etc, what is the need for lecturers? Does lecturing increase the NIH dollars a particular faculty member brings in? With the vast amount of material we're expected to learn, efficiency of learning is a serious question every medical student is forced to grapple with.

Like much of physics, perhaps removing time from the equation would be a useful way to feret out the basic principles of this issue? Basic science lectures are surely some of the less dynamic presentations in the world, but their veracity is likely to be quite high, that is, a student is unlikely to find an entirely opposite position stated as truth, and thus testing can establish the quality of the learning experience.

I have casually looked for, but have not found, studies that compare surveys of student learning methods with course or USMLE outcomes. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong places or need to look harder, but mainly I find, when searching for 'how to learn', a lot of categorical listings of all possible methods beginning and ending with disclaimers of the sort "Your own learning style will be something you develop in your studies." Or perhaps we all have been wandering aimlessly from one method to another.

-- Niels Olson (email), August 22, 2006

The following "Undergraduate Statistics Announcement" advances the woes of good statistical analysis by REQUIRING the project be submitted via PP!

http://www.causeweb.org/usproc.php

Mike Round

Materials to be submitted include:

A Microsoft PowerPoint?? document containing no more than 16 slides and a Microsoft Word?? document of no more than 4 pages (see description of formats in (a) - (d)).

The PowerPoint slides should consist of all essential materials addressing all the evaluating criteria. The Word document should consist of an abstract (300 words or less) and may contain additional supplementary information such as the background of the study, the process of data collection, cleansing process, selection of analytical techniques, references, etc. It is not advisable for both the PowerPoint slides and the Word document to contain the same information.

The font size of the PowerPoint slides should allow for the project to be adequately viewed if it were to be printed off and put on a standard 3-panel science-fair free-standing poster board. The title of the presentation should be no less than a 36 point font. Any subtitles should be no less than a 24 point font and any other text should be no less than a 16 point font.

The font size for the Word document of the additional supporting information should be no less than 12 points in Times New Roman font. There must be NO mention of students' names, university affiliation, or anything else linking the 16 pages of PowerPoint and the 4 pages of the Word document to a specific person or a school. This information should be provided on the cover page.

A Word document containing the cover page. Download the cover page.

-- Michael Round (email), August 31, 2006

A couple of observations, gleaned from experiences teaching writing to undergrad engineering majors, and also teaching business writing...

Although in my much younger days, I naively imagined that university students tended to read books, I have since become disabused of my ignorance on this topic. However, without exception, my best students read voraciously. It didn't matter whether they read "Road & Track", or " War & Peace" -- as long as they read, their written language expressed ideas and relationships (before, after, consequently, however, because...).

Several of the courses that I taught required that students create a PP Presentation. Without exception, brighter students researched their topics well, which meant that their level of mastery was higher and they communicated effectively. They'd have been able to give a solid presentation without PP. However, less effective communicators were greatly aided by PP.

Nevertheless, I'd note two limitions of PP that not even the best students managed to overcome. First, a PP screen is essentially ONE LAYER of information; it is not possible to 'stack' content along a z-axis in PP. Second, students whose papers contained lots of 'relational' language (because, before, consequently) did not use those words in their PP presentations - as a result, causation dropped out of the communication.

The limitation of a single 'layer' in PP can be easily solved in Flash, which allows for the creation of layers on the z-axis. Whereas Flash allows a presenter to add multiple layers -- as the example at gapminder.org illustrates -- this is simply not possible in PP. In my view, this is one of PP's most serious limitations.

PP can help a lousy communicator give an adequate presentation. But someone who wants to convey complex relationships, or changes over time, will probably feel too limited by PP and seek out other alternatives.

-- Maura G (email), September 23, 2006

Personally I love what I've learned listening to great lectures. And I agree that Power Point generally prevents great lectures. But how?

No idea what happens to others, but I've noticed that when I used to give good talks, presenations that inspired audiences and got me jobs, I would carefully think through the material and how it could be exposed before carefully crafting a few visual aids.

With Power Point I work out of order which means that I think out of order. I start with a title and template. I assemble visuals. Then, if there is time, I might think about the relation between my topic and available data.

-- Peter Kaplan (email), October 7, 2006

An analogy to the "tool vs. users" argument. Assume someone brings out a new design of a hammer. In the first few months, there are a number of accidents: users hit their fingers, etc. What does one do? Does one start re-designing the hammer or re-educating/re-designing the users? Would not the hammer be considered ill-designed? I think same goes for PP - it encourages silly and shallow thinking.

-- Gabor Lovei (email), October 13, 2006

Apparently someone at NASA is listening. From the Toastmasters International District 47 (Florida) newsletter, the 'Sunshiner' Fall 2006:

"The effective use of PowerPoint was illustrated by a keynote speaker from NASA at the fall conference. What makes this effective? There are no words for the presenter to read."

-- Craig Pickering (email), October 14, 2006

I work for one of the major global american multinationals, and as part of my work provide training and coaching on presentations. Having read ET's damming of PowerPoint I want to wholeheartedly agree, but strangely cannot. I agree, mostly; I agree broadly with the idea that PowerPoint is poor, limited, and not completely fit for the full range of uses. But I disagree that it cannot be used effectively to present or communicate effectively.

In business Powerpoint is the standard, the automatic, the bland repetition; so it is dull and unexciting if not used properly. The problem is people use it immediately, without thought for how to make a new exciting and energising experience for the audience. And that Powerpoint is designed to quickly and easily put across a few set templates on look and design; which after a few viewings become boring.

Now if Powerpoint was better designed, created to encourage people to stretch in different visual ways to put across their information, then the fact it is staid would not matter so much. But it is not that creativity is not possible through powerpoint, it is that it is not easy or intuitive. With good training people can make good visual communications through powerpoint (admittadly with Excel on the side).

It is possible strip "ink" out of excel charts to some extent. It is then possibly to take this process further through powerpoint, until you have created the sort of efficient and informative chart that ET would advocate.

However, we should all be clear: Powerpoint is not what it should be. There should be better tools. People should have greater presenting options.

Richard

-- Richard Pascoe (email), October 16, 2006

I think the real problem with PP, and slideware in general, is not the technology itself but the culture that surrounds it. In the business world, at least, senior "leadership" cannot be bothered to actually pay attention to a presentation for even 15 minutes, or read a 5 page document. They typically want information in a hyper-condensed form to review on their own time, and then pass it around in place of actually putting together a coherent document.

Consequentially, the slides *become* the presentation, rather than a supporting tool. Because the slides have two audiences, the presenter attempts to cater to both. The presenter attempts to keep the presentation visual for the present audience (usually poorly, with clip art, etc., and this IS the presenter's fault). But, since the presentation must also be a viable document separate from the presenter, they attempt to condense too much information into each page, resulting in the unholy propogation of bullet points. The presenter's role in all this is simply as an automaton, reading the slides verbatim and operating the remote control. Of course, this fails both audiences.

-- Doug Rohde (email), October 20, 2006

Hello to all PP enthusiasts out there.

I am stuck using PP for nearly every task that I am charged with; and I'm trying to make it work!

While researching a particular consulting firm, I stumbled upon what clearly appeared to be a joke... but it wasn't! The web address below will take you to a page where information design and PP collide. It's not a pretty picture.

I don't know if bad PP presentations are the fault of the user, but I am sure that MIT graduates should be able to do better than this:

http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=2,1,6,9

Good luck in your PP travels!

-- David Erdman (email), March 1, 2007

<Stay with me here, as it might take me some time to get where I want to go with this.>

Recently my 14-year-old son had to do a project on a Civil War battle. The rubric required some sort of physical model. With the model were to be some annotations and things learned and such. He made his from our vast Lego collection, using individual blue and grey 1x1 pieces for soldiers. And it had little roads and a school and a church and some miniature horsies and some cannon and flags and whatnot. So, from a distance, you can see that this is a battle, globs of blue and gray, a little church and school, and the roads. But when you get close, eventhough the really fine detail on the items isn't there, there is an *improvement in resolution*. Oooh, look!; a horse. Oooh, look!; a guy loading a cannon. Oooh, look!; the blue outnumber the grey 2 to 1. Oooh, look!; a tent with maps!

So, the model works on a number of levels and it works well because *the viewer is rewarded by making the effort to look for detail*. Investment by the viewer results in increased understanding. Getting closer improves resolution.

The same thing happens with a good map; zooming in improves resolution. We just got back from my sister's wedding in Ohio; the road atlas has subtle little blue buildings showing the rest-stops, if you look closely.

ET calls this concept, I think, "layering and separation". Good maps have it. Harry's Civil War model had it. Good graphics have it. "Reward the viewer's investment in the data display" might be the principle here.

So, what does this have to do with PowerPoint? Well, I examined the 'presentation' that the MIT graduates did. One the surface it looks like a big complicated mess. Fine, I thought, I just look closer. Do I get rewarded?

No, I get more and more confused. I don't see more detail; all I see are more and more ambiguous words and phrases. I have to start guessing about what it means. "An insight-driven implementation allows GSG to deliver successful solutions to target verticals in the growing small business market." Huh? The more I read, the *less* I understand. These aren't sentences in a narrative, these are pitch points with no meaning. I invested my time and energy and got shafted. I want my investment back.

Is it PowerPoint? Well, the slides I am looking at are actually pdf slides, so PowerPoint is off the hook. The issue is that the display medium is inadequate. The lower-resolution computer screen and the pitch mentality promote this jumble of noise. It's just garbage.

[On a side note, note that "A.T. Kearney expertise" is listed as the 4th "Critical Success Factor". Guess who sponsored the competition? Yep. You got it. I'd like to know how many of the losing presentations also acknowledged ATKearney on slide 1.]

Rafe

-- rafe donahue (email), March 2, 2007

The MIT presentation may be a decent handout to attendees who can understand the jargon used but the slides/pages are much too detailed for screen display.

And this presentation won a prize?

Bill Sharpe

-- Bill Sharpe (email), March 2, 2007

"Technical reports are smarter than power point"

I think, on the contrary, Tex/Latex have, pound for pound, symbol for symbol, produced as much contentless blabber as powerpoint has.

-- victor yodaiken (email), March 3, 2007

From the Daily Princetonian:

It's clear that most of these worthy people have had a lot of advice on how to give a formal academic presentation. Their PowerPoint slides are beautifully organized, the background designs are works of art, bullet points fly in from all directions, the animations jump and spin and the sequence follows an immutable formula: the problem, the prior work, the contributions of the thesis, the future work, the acknowledgments. It's incredibly soporific, and I confess without much embarrassment that I often doze off.

But when I wake up, I wonder -- these fine young people have been taught how to give a great job talk, but what have they been taught about giving two or three lectures every week to real students? What do they know about the reality of being a professor? If they had gone to Prof. School, what might they have learned?

One thing they should have learned already is that PowerPoint is a two-edged sword. In the right hands, it can be persuasive and effective, but in the wrong hands (that is, almost everyone who uses it), it provides form without content, five minutes worth of talking points to spread over an hour. If we could somehow convert PowerPoint slides into pills, insomnia, like smallpox, would be eradicated from the earth.

-- Jose Silva (email), March 5, 2007

Maybe users should ditch the Swiss-Army-Knife model of presentation preparation

I work in academia and a large part of the job is making presentations. The tool of choice by almost all is Powerpoint, sometimes Keynote for Apple users. One of the advantages of Powerpoint, say the users, is that everything is in the same place: you can plan the presentation, make the slides, add the occasional picture and change it with the included tools, and so on. Then you use the slides, two per page, as the handout, and you can even write your notes in the same file and print them separately or have them on the secondary screen. Wowza!

I confess that I once though like this myself. Then I evolved. ET's books and ET's course, and this web site, were very influential in that evolution. In addition to using handouts (or research papers, or the textbooks) as the main presentation tool, even when making "presentation materials" I prefer to use specialized tools rather than an integrated application. Consider a typical academic presentation, speech, or the lecture part of a class. It involves several specialized tools that are very good at what they do, instead of a swiss-army-knife program that is not good at anything, except as a projector operating system:

Most of the planning is done in TextWrangler (a free text editor for OS X) or on paper. Planning includes lists of teaching or presentation objectives, questions to keep discussion going and their relation to the teaching objectives of the class, examples, supporting materials, exercises, and the bon mots, including a strong opener and closing thoughts.

Long text is written in Microsoft Word to make use of the version control and language tools; except on rare occasions, Microsoft Word is not used for style or formatting, that being better done by InDesign or LaTeX.

Mathematical text is composed in LaTeX and rendered in Equation Service (a LaTeX utility for OS X) if it goes on projection materials. I have a rule that there must be a really good reason to put a mathematical formula on a projection screen (formulas' natural habitat is the handout, distributed in advance with copious explanation of notation, assumptions, proofs, lemmas, etc).

Mathematical graphs are made either in Mathematica (if they are rendering of formulas or numerical computations) or Stata (if they are statistical summaries), then Illustrator and sometimes Photoshop are used for post-production. (Post-production means changing the style, not the content of the graphs.) Excel may be used as a calculator for examples, but no Excel tables or charts are ever allowed in production-level materials.

Diagrams are made in Illustrator or in InDesign. Illustrator is used if there are mostly graphic elements, InDesign if there is much text. Tables (other than the mathematical tables made in LaTeX) and any graphic elements with large amount of text are made in InDesign. Image post-production is made in Photoshop, sometimes with additional elements created in Illustrator.

Handouts are assembled in InDesign, except long mathematical texts, which are created entirely in LaTeX. When using a text from a web source I generally retypeset the text into InDesign (with full attribution and URL), to remove extraneous elements and distractions and to ensure consistency in the handout quality.

Visual projection elements are organized and sequenced in Keynote. Because Keynote is used only as a projector operating system, I generally keep notes in a separate support, paper. This is because the visual elements are occasional to the speech/presentation/ academic talk/class rather than a constant presence.

-- Jose Silva (email), March 26, 2007

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald describes the findings of study on the effectiveness of teaching and presentation methods with regard to the cognitive load placed on the learner. The study found that it is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in written and spoken form at the same time.

The conclusion made by John Sweller of the University of New South Wales is that "The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched."

See;

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/03/1175366240499.html

-- Andrew Leonard (email), April 4, 2007

Professor Sweller's web page at the University of New South Wales provides a very good introduction to cognitive load theory. At the end he recommends a few sources for further reading.

-- Niels Olson (email), April 5, 2007

If PowerPoint is so important to learning, then I am challenged to understand how any University course was ever taught or any engineering project was ever accomplished before PowerPoint and its progeny.

A presentation of ideas is no less a performance art than a stage play. You have a script, actors, props and a stage.

The script for the speaker needs to be well thought out in advance and the actor/speaker needs to rehearse this presentation until it is a part of them. Then they need to focus on delivering that message to the audience with well intended results.

The day you accept a Broadway actor reading to you on stage on opening night is the day I will accept a presentation being read to me. Sadly that is how most PowerPoints are delivered.

The term 'visual aid' is a key to the success or failure in PowerPoint. If it enhances the message, it works. If it detracts, it does not and should be eliminated as a prop for the speaker.

The audience does not assemble and invest their time to read your notes or be read to. The audience gathers to hear your words and watch you, the speaker, deliver them. They want eye contact. They want commitment.

Fumbling with microphones, computers, projectors, notes, or lighting is disrespectful of people attending your meetings. It is the manifestation of poor planning on the part of the speaker. It upstages you and dilutes your power as an authority on the platform.

The speaker has the obligation of moving the audience with the speaker's message: words, actions and emotions. That is the speaker's primary responsibility. The tools/props are inert and are not responsible for how well or poorly the speaker deploys them.

So if you use PowerPoint, you, the speaker, are obliged to the audience to master the use of Powerpoint, to rehearse the use of the presentation, and to make certain that what appears on screen is an enhancement to what you are saying. If you can't do that due to time, ability or mechanical difficulties, you must discard the prop and be prepared to deliver your message unaided. You have to do more than show up to gain the audiences respect. You have to walk your talk.

The tragedy is that PowerPoint has become a substitute for good speaking in the majority of cases. Presenters read the slides out of boredom or obligation. Often, Powerpoints are made by one department and sent out to be delivered by another - by non-authors. That lack of ownership and lack of pride in authorship lends itself to devastating consequences for the audience.

PowerPoint is a poor substitute for mastering your material and engaging your audience while respecting their immediate needs.

The cure is simple: Learn to be a great speaker first, without these crutches. Focus on what you audience wants more than yourself. When you have mastered giving a speech with confidence then you can choose to add PowerPoints to amplify your message, that is, if you really feel compelled to do so.

Remember, it is the message that is important, not the medium.

-- Mitch Krayton (email), April 16, 2007

It's interesting to see a grass roots rebellion against PowerPoint coming up too. London, England, Times newspaper, 18th April 2007: see http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article1666665.ece for a critique from the point of view of sheer boredom!

-- Crispian Strachan (email), April 18, 2007

PP is so ubiquitous I think the good/bad aspects demand a case by case examination. A good argument could be made for banning it in academia totally. In business and the professions, valid opportunities exist for using PP that range from simple staff meetings on up to keynote speeches at international symposiums. I think the ugliness comes from the awkward sense that once it's apparent a PP slide show has begun for whatever reason, the die has been cast to endure the overkill-esque consequences of too many unnecessary slides since the practical logistics of actually not using slides means the multilayered disruptions caused by lights-on/lights-off fumblings. It's easier to just pump out worthless filler slides to maintain a continuity than it is to orchestrate a balanced slide/no slide experience. For sure, a zingy 'Welcome' PP slide can excite an audience and is an absolute must. But if the author has zero PP skills and by the 5th slide the audience knows it, all the enthusiasm is pretty much lost for the remainder of the briefing. PP is a tool. If the roof leaks, it's not the tool's fault. Unfortunately, anyone can unleash lousy PP on the world and it should probably be a crime to do so. The solution is not to dump electronic slideware but to protest those unfit to practice it. That a tall order since to regulate PP presentations is silly and impractical. A much bigger problem - but along the same lines - is that it's so easy to bring a child into the world by so many people completely unfit to be a parent.

-- Steve Fogg (email), May 7, 2007

I guess this is the wrong approach to take on this forum, but I completely disagree with many of the notions presented here. Let me elaborate:

1. What you give up in resolution, you gain elsewhere: You could give people printed handouts with intricate levels of detail, but you could also have self paced presentations that rely on other means of making up for the resolution issue. For example, the use of layers and zoomable interfaces. I argue that computer screens are superior to paper because they are dynamic, and this dynamicity can manifest itself by bringing into context only specific relevant information at a particular point in time. Or, as a simpler metaphor, I submit that Geographical information systems are a richer way to learn about a specific area than a printed map would be. Depending on ones level of interest one could turn off and on various layers, leading to a much richer experience.

2. The slide as a metaphor - has value. The problem is that it is currently mapped to a legacy notion: putting foils one after the other on a projector.

It would be, IMHO much better to map it to other contexts: slides forming layers, being zoomable, hide-able etc. There is nothing that dictates that all slides in a presentation cannot be all visible at the same time, or even navigable in a non-linear fashion. What this means is that one could potentially facilitate a post production process from PowerPoint into some of these concepts, using flash/svg as a medium. So PowerPoint can still be a good authoring environment, but with some interesting post production techniques in place. I'm currently experimenting with some approaches in this area.

3. A lot of the arguments I see on how PowerPoint is really bad at allowing people to do presentations reminds me of artist friends who would scoff at pencils - oh what an inflexible medium, I cant do anything that resembles an oil painting with this. Yes, but when you want to jot something down, a pencil wins hands down, and there are people who have produced really good looking drawings using pencils or pencil like media (Durer for example).

-- Vijay Chakravarthy (email), May 9, 2007

For a light-hearted look at the issue, visit this URL.

http://www.davidairey.com/how-not-to-use-powerpoint/

-- Gordon Fuller (email), June 1, 2007

Thoughtful account of PP history by PP inventors

Lee Gomes, "PowerPoint turns 20, as its creators ponder a dark side to success," Wall Sreet Journal, June 20, 2007, here

-- Edward Tufte, June 20, 2007

In my own work, I have decided to make the distinction between Powerpoint and powerpoint. That work is giving presentation skills workshops for professionals (usually therapists and those who derive their income from evidence-based practice), and Edward's work features prominently.

Powerpoint, with the capital P, is the Microsoft application, now 20 years old. powerpoint with a lower case p, is the method of presenting complex information about which most on this forum rail against... it is what Edward refers to as the "Cognitive Style of Powerpoint", something which Powerpoint apologists struggle to understand in their arguments that "it's the user not the tool", or "a lousy carpenter blames his (or her) tools."

I illustrate the difference between Powerpoint and powerpoint (the latter being the genericisation of the former, much like Xerox has become xerox and Hoover has become hoover) by organising to have an internet connection when I give my workshops. Having explored some of the cognitive theory underlying powerpoint, I then have the audience play a game of powerpointwhacking. This is a modification of the early Google-based game called Google-whacking, where one used the fewest terms in Google's search field to derive one and only one unique result. That's a very difficult game to play nowadays!

In powerpointwhacking, I ask the audience to come up with the most esoteric concept they can, which we then use as a search term in Google, adding .ppt so Google locates Powerpoint stacks in its result page.

Two amazing things (for the audience, that is) then happen: 1. No matter how esoteric the subject, someone will have done a Powerpoint stack for it (or at least one converted to pdf for internet sharing) and, 2. 99% of the stacks I download and then open in either Powerpoint or Keynote are execrable.

This fun task (do try it for yourself) is something of a high-wire act as one never knows what will happen, but I can report it has never failed me. That I am prepared to do this on the fly does add to my credibility, I've been informed. It also drives home my point of the need for training, having established initially powerpoint's faults.

I will cheat a little occasionally, I must say. While I prefer to use the first result Google produces, I have a preference for those .ppt stacks that come from a website which ends in either .mil, or .gov. Then my hit rate for sucky powerpoint increases to 99.9%.

The question I then pose to my audience, who have no doubt connoted it on the own, is why powerpoint has become so pervasive if it is so faulty.

I have attempted to answer this question myself using Social Conformity theory, and the interested reader is directed to my blog entry, Powerpoint, Obedience and Conformity: Why do smart people feel compelled to use Powerpoint when it's no longer "best practice"? If it ever was....

Note that I used the capital P, before I developed the concept of powerpoint. That's recorded in another blog entry which can be located on the same blog page. And it came about in anger as media commentators kept referring to Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" as a Powerpoint show, thus demonstrating on a worldwide stage, how Powerpoint had become a generic term.

Les Posen
Clinical Psychologist
Melbourne, Australia

-- Les Posen (email), June 23, 2007

After attending Mr. Tufte's Portland seminar, I gave a presentation on the content to my colleagues at work. I focused on how what I learned could be used to improve the design of our own software. Naturally, I couldn't in good conscience use a PowerPoint for this.

Instead I wrote a one-page, double-sided report highlighting the seminar's scope and detailing various salient points. I then created a number of design ideas using what I learned. PowerPoint was employed as a blank delivery mechanism for the new designs. I simply copied and pasted items from various Visio storyboards, Word tables, and PaintShop mocks onto completely blank slides to use as visual aids for my talk. There was no text and only five slides were needed. This allowed me to use presentation mode to easily flip through the designs without having to change applications or filter out irrelevant elements on the fly. And because I didn't waste time distilling my report into little text bullets, I could focus on creating good design ideas to share.

I was amazed at how smoothly the presentation went. The group read through the report while I elaborated on the details and the projected designs gave them a focal point as well as needed context for the theory. There was a high level of understanding and feedback was pointed and content rich. Time of the meeting was reduced by 50% compared to my initial expectations.

I also had a number of compliments on my designs (thank you Mr. Tufte) as well as on the presentation itself. The best part is that, for those who missed it, I can simply hand them a copy of the report and point them to the designs.

-- Venecia Rauls (email), August 1, 2007

The following excerpt, from The McKinsey Quarterly, is part of an interview with Richard Rumelt discussing the development of business strategies. I found it intriguing that in a short interview covering broad topics, he makes the specific assertion that strategic thinking and planning cannot be accomplished if PowerPoint is used. He states that it "drives out thinking".

The Quarterly: What sort of group can analyze these kinds of things (Strategy dynamics)?

Richard Rumelt: A small group of smart people. What else can I say? Doing this kind of work is hard. A strategic insight is essentially the solution to a puzzle. Puzzles are solved by individuals or very tight-knit teams. For that, you need a small group. With big groups and complex processes you can select the better solution to the puzzle, and you can get consensus and buy-in and even commitment.

One other thing. If I had my way, small groups like this would be absolutely prohibited from doing PowerPoint presentations! Using bullet points so much drives out thinking. One of the nice features of PowerPoint is how fast you can create a presentation. But that's the trouble. People end up with bullet points that contradict one another, and no one notices! It is simply amazing.

If you ask a group to put aside the bullet points and just write three coherent paragraphs about what is changing in an industry and why, the difference is incredible. Having to link your thoughts, giving reasons and qualifications, makes you a more careful thinker -- and a better communicator.

The entire interview is at http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategys_strategist_An_interview_with_Richard_Rumelt#foot2up, registration required.

-- Walt Treichel (email), August 14, 2007

Knowledge Objects

For those interested in the cognitive mash-ups between presenters and consumers (teachers and students being the most studied case), and the disconnect between PowerPoint packets of information and the large complex knowledge objects that good thinking requires, Noel Entwistle seems to have done quite a bit of research in this area. This representative textbook excerpt has, as an added bonus, links to writings by many of his colleagues in the field: The use of research on student learning in quality assessment. Further searches of the literature for those names turn up a striking number of well-written and illuminating articles.

Here are a couple of segments of the excerpt. As you read, especially the second segment below, ask yourself what methods (PowerPoint, chalkboard, video, etc) would best help a student build their own complex knowledge objects.

This first segment is an extremely short summary of a lot his research from the late sixties to the present (here actually quoting one of the other researchers on the site, Gibbs, with whom Entwistle seems to have been in general agreement for quite some time):

Encouraging and Supporting High Quality Learning

Research on student learning has been identifying a variety of teaching approaches which encourage students to adopt a deep approach to learning and studying, in other words to seek personal understanding rather than being satisfied with simply reproducing course content. Biggs (1989) identified four broad aspects of the learning environment which he believed would encourage a deep approach.

1. Motivational context which depends on students experiencing 'ownership' of course content and establishing a positive emotional climate associated with learning.
2. Learner activity which not only involves 'doing', but also reflecting on the activity and developing abstract conceptions.
3. Interaction with others which allows the negotiation of meaning with peers, either in tutorial contexts or in autonomous student groups.
4. A well-structured knowledge base to promote the integration of content into broad inter-related wholes rather than concentrating on pieces of information in isolation.

This second segment goes into more depth about about learner activities and developing abstract conceptions:

Developing Conceptual Understanding

In higher education, students are expected to learn how to think and use evidence in ways which are characteristic of the discipline they are studying. The essence of understanding is the connection between new ideas and what a person already knows (Entwistle, Entwistle and Tait, 1992). It is thus, necessarily, individually constructed. In developing effective conceptual understanding, students have to construct their own frameworks of interpretation from the evidence, arguments and explanations they have heard and read. The extent to which students will be able to construct fully independent frameworks will depend, to some extent, on the discipline. In the humanities and social sciences, these constructions can incorporate personal experience to a greater extent than in the sciences. But even in studying science, students necessarily come to understand concepts in somewhat idiosyncratic ways. They use the available representations of the abstractions in contrasting ways - some more visual and some more mathematical, for example.

Diana Laurillard (1987,1993) has argued that academic learning has to be distinguished from everyday learning - it involves a difference between acquiring 'percepts' and 'precepts'. Much of academic learning is not just abstract, but it depends on thinking in 'approved' ways. Laurillard argues that the task of the teacher involves mediating learning. It is essentially a rhetorical activity in which the teacher seeks to persuade students to change their ways of making sense of various kinds of phenomena, using the concepts and ways of thinking characteristic of their discipline. The independent frameworks that students develop are thus constrained by the history of the discipline, and yet retain elements of individuality. To make this discussion more concrete, let us look at some recent research being done in Edinburgh.

We have been investigating how students develop interpretative frameworks. We have done this by interviewing students in their final undergraduate year and asking them how they go about integrating complex material, both in preparing for coursework essays and in revising for Finals (Entwistle & Entwistle, 1991; Entwistle, 1995). Initial analyses produced descriptions of common experiences of understanding during revision, and distinctive differences in the forms of understanding students were seeking. Here, we will look just at these differences (see Table 6).

Absorbing facts, details, and procedures related to exams without consideration of structure Accepting and using only the knowledge and logical structures provided in the lecture notes Relying mainly on notes to develop summary structures solely to control exam answers Developing structures of understanding from strategic reading geared to exam requirements Developing structures from wide reading relating understanding to the nature of the discipline

Table 6 Contrasting forms of understanding during revision for finals

In analysing the interview transcripts, it became clear that students were using the word 'understanding' in quite different ways. Their descriptions differed in terms of breadth (how much material was being brought together to create an understanding), depth (the variety and strength of the connections made within the material and to related ideas), and structure (the principles of organization used to provide a scaffolding for those connections). The forms represent a hierarchy with increasing levels of conceptual sophistication.

The study was not large enough to indicate what proportion of students would predominantly aim for which form of understanding, but there was a worrying suggestion that the second category might prove the most common, and indeed that some exam questions might well require no more than that. This category implies that the student is accepting the lecturer's understanding without developing it into the personal framework which creates deeper meaning. Relying too much on the lecturer's framework leads to explanations which 'parrot' the lecturers' arguments and borrow their examples and evidence. The result is superficial knowledge mimicking conceptual understanding, although it can be difficult for an examiner to detect.

The first category was used, in the sample, only by medical students in referring to their experience in pre-clinical exams, which again was worrying. The only first-class degrees were awarded to students in the penultimate category, who combined a deep approach with a strategic awareness of the demands of the examination system.

The final category described students who were predominantly concerned with their own conceptual understanding of the content, but as a result they seemed to lack an equivalently clear awareness of examination requirements. As one student said:

Well, there were cases where I knew too much ... I had to go through all the stages of working through [the topic] and showing that I had understood it. I couldn't gloss over the surface. And once I started writing, it all just 'welled up'. I felt that I couldn't interrupt the argument half-way, as it was developing ... [because] it ties together as a whole. It's very difficult to pick something like that apart, when you understand the theory like that. Half an understanding doesn't make sense!

Are you saying that you have to explain it in the way you understand it for yourself?

Yes. It's essential to demonstrate your understanding of the whole, and its implications and limitations ... You could say I shouldn't be (doing) that in an exam, but basically I have to do it that way, because that's me. Anyway, gearing your learning too closely just to previous exam papers seems a bit like a form of cheating.

Discussions of the transcripts with Ference Marton - triggered by one particular extract - 3 led to a reanalysis of certain sections of the transcripts (Entwistle and Marton, 1994). The extract which suggested this particular re-analysis came from a student who was able to reflect particularly clearly on how she used her revision notes and brought them to mind on demand. Her general strategy in revising each topic involved 'concising' voluminous notes, step by step, down to a simple framework which she then used to rehearse her own understanding. Her experience of using these frameworks involved something like visualization, and yet not quite. She experienced her understanding in a quasi-sensory way, knew what was there, could 'see' the main points in her final summary notes, and was confident that more details were linked to the main points and could be retrieved when required.

The subsequent analysis of the whole set of interviews suggested that this experience was not uncommon, although the majority of students found more difficulty in articulating their experiences. Piecing together the range of incomplete descriptions, we concluded that students were experiencing their understandings as having some internal form and structure - almost as entities in their own right and these came to control their thinking paths in some way (Entwistle and Marton, 1994). The term knowledge object has been used to describe the essence of these quasi-sensory experiences of aspects of understanding. Focusing on key points within their knowledge object would 'pull up' additional information which they had memorized separately. In the words of one student, describing his ability to visualize a diagram he had been revising,

I can see that virtually as a picture, and I can review it, and bring in more facts about each part ... Looking at a particular part of the diagram sort of triggers off other thoughts. I find schematics, in flow diagrams and the like, very useful because a schematic acts a bit like a syllabus; it tells you what you should know, without actually telling you what it is. I think the facts are stored separately, ... and the schematic is like an index, I suppose.

The knowledge object also seems to be used to provide flexible control of an examination answer as it develops. There is a dynamic interplay between the knowledge object and the demands of the question which creates essentially a unique answer, but the knowledge object creates a generic structure for a topic which is likely to remain consistent. Some students seem also to use the knowledge object to monitor the adequacy of their explanations, and in some comments it was even given an independent existence - at least metaphorically.

Following that logic through, it pulls in pictures and facts as it needs them ... Each time I describe [a particular topic], it's likely to be different ... Well, you start with evolution, say, ... and suddenly you know where you're going next. Then, you might have a choice ... to go in that direction or that direction ... and follow it through various options it's offering ... Hopefully, you'll make the right choice, and so this goes to this, goes to this - and you've explained it to the level you've got to. Then, it says 'Okay, you can go on to talk about further criticisms in the time you've got left.'

The term 'knowledge object' is used to describe an experience. It is not intended to suggest that knowledge is a commodity which can be transferred from teacher to student. Quite the opposite. The whole essence of the knowledge object is that it is a personal construction which provides a mnemonic structure to summarize complex interconnections that have developed in the process of developing conceptual understanding.

We are currently analysing interviews with students about coursework essays to see to what extent similarly tight bundles of knowledge are developed. Our preliminary conclusion is that the knowledge objects formed in essay writing are much less firmly established than through extensive revision and occur only when the students engage personally with the topic. In our sample, most of the students interviewed seemed to be far too strategic in their approaches to essay writing for this to occur. But, of course, many of the students revising for finals were being equally strategic, and relied heavily on reproducing the understandings of their lecturers. Only those students fully committed to a deep approach created clearly defined knowledge objects.

One of the strengths of this type of qualitative research which describes students' experiences of learning is that the results should describe a 'recognizable reality'. The idea of a knowledge object should tally with experiences of both students and staff. Whether it will also prove a useful way of encouraging improvement in the quality of learning remains to be seen. At the moment, we have to rely on more fully developed concepts and ideas.

-- Niels Olson (email), August 20, 2007

I have found reading these forums thoroughly interesting.

On a related thought, one of the interesting things I find when responding to Federal Government proposals is how they dictate the length and size of the response (and often the format as well). For example, you may get in the instructions to responders something like the following:

Your technical response should be no more than 25 pages and be typed in Times New Roman font at 12 pitch. A 1 inch border must be included on all pages. You may use images or graphics, but these are included within the page count.

Of course, without the exact context, the above may seem appropriate or inappropriate, but often the technical proposal section (where such limitations are put in place) has very interesting problems that need detailed discussion. One such proposal I worked on was for a system to perform automatic translation (from foreign languages to English) and then categorization of information that can be received in a variety of formats (handwritten paper, typed text on a website, verbal recordings, etc.). This is not exactly an easy problem to even convey back to the Government that you thoroughly understand it, much less know how to provide an approach to solving it. Yet this had a technical proposal page count of less than 20 pages.

We put something together, but the proposal becomes terse and I would imagine that the proposal evaluators really had either one of two positions: either they didn't have enough information to intelligently make a good decision (who knows how many other proposals they saw besides ours and the winner or whether the winner was better) or had a preconceived decision already on who they wanted to win (defeating the purpose of even doing a request for proposals).

Just my 2 cents on another area where format seems to overtake the actual requirements.

-- Paul M. Boos (email), October 10, 2007

At USC, Powerpoint takes the central role in a tale of bad teaching. Unfortunately the piece leaves lines like this in without comment:

"I'm usually disappointed in professors that don't use PowerPoint because if you don't have their notes, you're in trouble when studying," Sliede said.

So I'll snark: what happened to real notes, you know text and figures on paper (or .pdf)? Like in textbooks, reference readings, assigned readings?

But universities are conditioning students to believe that printouts of pages of outline-like "power points" are study materials and that the professors' job is making these outlines to save students the trouble of reading a book or thinking. Thus-conditioned students then evaluate the teaching of their professors, creating a reinforcing feedback loop. And so I fear the end of learning will come in our time. Or in "modern teaching" format:

TEACHING IN OUR TIME

• Feedback (teaching evaluation)
  • Positive reinforcement (conditioning)
    • Effect: the end (feared)

WG

-- Jose C Silva (email), February 19, 2008

Duty of Consumers of Presentations to Hold Presenters Responsible

To quote from the opening paragraph of the chapter Corruption in Evidence Presentation from Beautiful Evidence:

“To maintain standards of quality, relevance, and integrity for evidence, consumers of presentations should [hold] presenters [...] intellectually and ethically responsible for what they show and tell.”

-- Jon Gross (email), March 6, 2008

This topic is most important and interesting to me. I have given, perhaps, several thousand presentations over the course of the past 25 years -- both academic and corporate. As a director in a large medical company, and as a student of Edward Tufte, I have become acutely aware over the years of how presentations are normally bereft of useful information, and the content that normally could be contained in a single written page is oftentimes presented tediously in meetings that can last 60-90 minutes. Ugh.

Having read the responses in this thread, most all seem to have valuable points, at least to me. Yet, I would argue that the problem is BOTH the presenter and the tool. The tool is designed specifically to enforce a kind of presentation style and (lack of) information content. Unfortunately, like Pavlov's dog, those who use it extensively become trained in its ways.

I have made a conscious effort to break the habit: with my staff I require that they write technical reports using proper grammar and complete sentences; I require that they back up their assertions with data and source material. I also require and reinforce that presentations are no substitute for proper technical analyses. I am certainly required to make presentations and the corporate culture almost overwhelmingly requires PowerPoint. In preparing for my presentations I have dealt head-on with this dilemma and have arrived at what I have found to be a compromise which is far from perfect but seems to work. I tend to use PowerPoint exclusively now for showing figures, flow diagrams, and technical information that I speak to directly using a laser pointer or (lacking that) my pen. I then include within those presentations links to documents (again, having complete sentences), spreadsheets and the like that can be launched quickly and provide links back to the original launching document itself.

Of course, properly rehearsing and crafting the presentation is necessary, as was described earlier in this thread. After all, a presentation (in whatever form) is telling a story, and stories require careful assembly. Yet, to the uninitiated or those who simply don't know to ask, PowerPoint by itself is a device that reinforces bad habits. Many a time I have been presented with PowerPoint "decks" that are supposed to represent complete technical analysis of a particular topic. I used to merely accept these. Now, I no longer do and do not even review them. I require the "author" to go back and explain in detail using a tool such as Microsoft Word.

I do not wish to give the impression that I am some arrogant academic communicating in a smug or holier-than-thou manner about this topic. I was at fault for many years in creating presentations of 60, 70, or even 80 slides that contained information which could be contained in just 10. I also received much "training" in "proper" presentation design (even paying thousands of dollars for such training). Furthermore, as I said, I've literally given thousands of presentations, even at very high levels in the federal government and to corporate CEOs. I believe that Edward Tufte's suggestions and revelations are right on the mark.

-- John Zaleski (email), March 9, 2008

A slide from a recent product demonstration I was shown. At first I thought my glasses had suffered some kind of failure, but after taking them on and off several times I realized that the text effect was intentional.

This is a feature of Powerpoint, I was told. No doubt intended to confuse and distract the audience from the message.

-- Samual Grafney (email), March 18, 2008

I'm not sure much needs to be said about this image. You'll find it at...

http://store.apple.com/Catalog/AsiaGeneric/Images/office2008lm_screen_powerpoint.jpg

The information density of this slide is approaching zero, even as the density of the audience is presumed to be approaching infinity.

Two items of note, both related to the series of grey & brown (orange?) tabs near the top of the screen. (Titled "Slide Themes", "Slide Layouts", "Transitions", etc...)

First, this set of three chevrons is part of something called "SmartArt Graphics". I'd hate to see the opposite kind of graphics.

Second, at the far right of that tab group, we see "WordArt".

*

I believe that the problem is one of intention on the part of the software publisher: any program that attempts to put design capability into the hands of an idiot is going to facilitate the creation of idiotic designs.

I took a keyboard class from Tom Coster once. He lamented the lack of patience in too many students -- an expectation that success or artistry was something that could be created instantly. Yet that is precisely what Microsoft is promoting. Their blurb for the Office 2008 version of Word, for example, trumpets:

"The Publishing Layout View workspace lets you create incredibly rich documents such as newsletters and brochures without a degree in design."

That appears to be a declaration of war upon professional designers.

• office_2008_pptx_screenshot.png

-- Michael Friesen (email), April 20, 2008

I think a bigger question hasn't been addressed, in this thread, or the entire ET forums.

I am a current second-year Doctorate of Pharmacy student in California, and we receive all of our lecture content in Powerpoint.

From surveying other pharmacy & medical schools across the state and the whole USA, it seems that presenting lectures in Powerpoint has been the norm for at least the past 5 years. This correlates sharply with the advent of "laptop-mandatory" health professions programs.

The underlying question of slideware's inadequacy for presenting information will become evident when these "educated on Powerpoint" clinicians start practicing in a few years.

Instead of asking which medical school your doctor attended, will the question of determining the quality of a clinician come to asking if (s)he studied for her/his exams with Powerpoint, or books?

-- Adam Smith (email), July 26, 2008

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, I was employed as a graphic designer of corporate communications; at that time a new and innovative industry. As a freelancer, I was hired to design presentations for FORTUNE 500 companies and others, incidentally, including NASA. As a designer, I was provided with large quantities of information specific to an industry, with which I was usually unfamiliar. My job was to identify the client's salient points and make them make them clear and understandable to a general audience. It didn't matter if the product at hand was automotive, food, computers, or explaining Impressionist paintings in a museum, my job was the same... simplify.

I was married for a good part of those years to an attorney. We learned by critiquing each other, that writing briefs and creating storyboards were both essentially editing jobs. Anything that is extraneous to the message or doesn't aid understanding is out, no matter how clever it makes you feel. Redundancy is out, but repetition in, as long as it functions as reiteration to aid memory. The design included building a theme, to create visual cohesion as well as make it attractive. At times, great gobs of type might be replaced by one relevant picture or graphic. Anything effective had to be concise.

Sometime in the late '80's, the presentations began to be done on computer. Clients started to change fonts, not to aid clarity, but just for the novelty of seeing all the type change. Now producers had to hire computer artists to render the storyboard designs and the artists thought they were also designers, not realizing what designers did. Then storyboards, the functional tool where the basic editing took place, were deemed superfluous.

I now work in PowerPoint. I don't use the built-in templates, since they mainly get in the way.

I do not understand how you can expect a tool, no matter how sophisticated, to do what is essentially an editing job. That Rocket Science slide looks like an unedited first draft. Learned people should be insulted, but unfortunately, complaining is impolitic. Therefore, presentations are too often done hastily or offloaded to people who are not expected to think, just make slides.

Although I applaud your attempt to help us understand each other better, placing the blame on Microsoft (even if quasi-serious), for our endemic failure to communicate just adds fuel to the fire. Have we really come to expect machines to make up for our own shortcomings?

I believe the main reason for giving presentations is that the brains of humans are organized differently from each other. While some people can learn by hearing a lecture, others need the additional stimuli of visual reinforcement. Certain persons, myself included, are distracted if the lecturer makes a particularly interesting point. I get stuck thinking about it and by the time I refocus on the speaker, have missed the last 3 things that were said. It helps to have an outline to get back quickly to the right point.

Still, I always prefer to read a report when possible. Perhaps it's feared that reports will not be read, just find their way to the bottom of a pile.

-- Carol Seiler Ryan (email), January 3, 2009

Humor piece

Ross Brown, tongue in cheek, art-reviews a presentation with incoherent data, bad fonts, arbitrary color, and an unsettling presenter.

Critique of your PP presentation titled "Sales forecast, third quarter." http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/1/6brown.html

-- Jason Catena (email), January 6, 2009

Great thread - been a fan for a while - good discussion. This reinforces my experience that a thread with this many quality eyeballs and good moderation provides someone with great breadth of information very efficiently.

I don't have much more to offer intelectuatlly - but found the last threads mostly textual and would offer some more visual context and some lightheartedness. Here is Scott Adam's cartoon on the subject.

(ET, Sir, would you please help with the HTML to imbed in my note please - BTW just took your seminar in Austin on Tuesday - know you worked with my buddy John Barry on the CAIB - had always wondered why that final PPT was so good!)

Also think it is worth noting from my personal experience how much the Pentagon does rely on PPT - as a Reservist and former F-16 pilot, I was called back for a year after 9-11 and worked in Air Force strategic planning. Everywhere PPT was unfortunately both the linqua franca and the coin of the relm. The frustration level of the people who have to make their career in it is easily shown in the comedy flight suit patches they produced to mock the situation (taking on the form of the sought after experience patches pilots like to wear showing their flight experience - in hours).

• imaginary-productivity-W176H466.png

-- Ross Miles (email), January 29, 2009

Another example of how it may be more effective to distribute handouts/reading material before a presentation versus enslaving a meeting to a deck of slides comes from Steve Ballmer From "Meetings, Version 2.0, at Microsoft", in the New York Times' Corner Office column (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/business/17corner.html):

Q. What's it like to be in a meeting run by Steve Ballmer?

A. I've changed that, really in the last couple years. The mode of Microsoft meetings used to be: You come with something we haven't seen in a slide deck or presentation. You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call "the long and winding road." You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion.

That's kind of the way I used to like to do it, and the way Bill [Gates] used to kind of like to do it. And it seemed like the best way to do it, because if you went to the conclusion first, you'd get: "What about this? Have you thought about this?" So people naturally tried to tell you all the things that supported the decision, and then tell you the decision.

I decided that's not what I want to do anymore. I don't think it's productive. I don't think it's efficient. I get impatient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: "I've got the following four questions. Please don't present the deck." That lets us go, whether they've organized it that way or not, to the recommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus.

-- Vaibhav Vaish (email), May 17, 2009

There is a tangent to this threads opening question, "the fault of PP users?", in the ongoing debate (2009) about what kind of loans consumers should be offered. The proposal is that the consumer should be offered as default a "plain vanilla" loan which is designed by professionals in order to give the avarage consumer the most usefull product. This WSJ article gives the basics behind the idea http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597610438257573.html

The proposed regulation is based on research that shows that most people end up using the default option. For loans that will be what the lender gets the best deal from, in PP it will be bullet points.

Blaming consumers is a waste of energy. There is more to gain by designing good default versions than spending energy training consumers in choosing away from the default to the better versions.

The PP equivalent should be to offer PP users templates that are designed to result in better presentations than what we get from the existing default ones.

-- Gaute Solheim (email), August 7, 2009