Rethinking the design of presentation slides: a case for sentence headlines and visual evidence.

SUMMARY

* Argues for a significantly different design of presentation slides that is particularly well suited to technical presentations.

* Outlines the key advantages and challenges of this design, and assesses attempts to disseminate it

INTRODUCTION

The next presentation slide or overhead transparency goes up, and the audience immediately gives it their attention. Does the audience quickly grasp the main assertion of what is projected? Does the projection actually help the audience understand and retain the material? If the slides are distributed as sets of notes, do those notes serve the audience weeks later?

If the slide is designed using the traditional phrase headline supported by a bulleted list and is being used to convey technical material, the answer to all of these questions is "no." For most presenters of technical material, however, the most pertinent question may be "What other design could I possibly use?" This article advocates an alternative design that uses a succinct sentence headline supported by visual evidence to meet the audience's need to understand the technical concepts being presented. This alternative design makes communication more efficient, memorable, and persuasive, and is much better suited to the presentation of technical material than is the traditional bullet list format. Shown in Figure 1 is a contrast between this alternative design and the traditional design.

In technical presentations, projected slides have become a standard feature. Since PowerPoint was introduced by Microsoft in the late 1980s (Wikimedia Foundation 2005), slide designs have become more standardized, in large part because PowerPoint itself is used so pervasively. Experts who follow trends in presentation techniques estimate that PowerPoint is used to make an estimated 20 to 30 million presentations every day and has between 250 and 400 million users around the globe (Goldstein 2003; Schwartz 2003; Simons 2004; Zielinski 2003). Ideally, well-designed slides can emphasize key points, show images too complex to explain in words, and reveal the organization of the presentation.

Unfortunately, the usual design of a phrase headline supported by a bullet list seldom leads to achieving these ideals. We believe that the shortcomings of this design are particularly significant in technical presentations, where achieving a clear mental picture of the phenomenon or device being described is often essential to effective communication. To demonstrate these shortcomings, this article