Powerpoint
May 2nd, 2007
Guy Kawasaki is an evangelist of the 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint presentations: 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30-point text.
I went to a presentation today where the speaker paid that rule no heed. The resulting boring, rambling, incomprehensible, unreadable, never-ending monstrosity made me want to gouge out my eyes, glue closed my ears, and run for the exit. Ug. I actually left partway through, ostensibly for “another meeting.”
These guidelines should be required reading for anyone who needs to give presentations in a professional setting. For authors of academic or technical papers, please, please read these too.
(This post is part of the 100/100/100 challenge)
Too bad Rose Profs don’t always follow those rules.
I wish my last professor followed these to at least some degree. Every lecture he would have 300+ slides for a 3 hour class (that’s right, 100 slides / hour). The class ended up being the biggest waste of my time and effort so far in my academic career…but this isn’t just because of his horrible presentations. Making slides like that without realizing it’s a problem is a good sign that he didn’t have the common sense to see their futility.
I tend to side with Tufte, Powerpoint sucks for information transfer: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint (and if you are going to use 30 point text, why have slides at all?)