More good stuff from Presentation Zen - the book

Here are some more snippets I found interesting in Garr Reynolds’ book:

“Concreteness: Use natural speech and give real examples with real things, not abstractions.” (p. 77)

“If you feel tempted to use a picture of two hands shaking in front of a globe, put the pencil down, step away from the desk, and think about taking a vacation or investigating aromatherapy”[!]—Nancy Duarte (p. 94)

Signal to Noise Ratio: “the ratio of relevant to irrelevant elements or information in a slide or other display. The goal is to have the hightest signal-to-noise ratio possible in your slides.” (p. 122)

Several examples of excellent Ballroom style presentations (p. 166-178)

Comments

[Simple Country Physicist]

It is not that easy with signal-to-noise ratio. You have to take working memory into account and how long it takes to get things out of working into long term memory.

Working memory, depending on person, will hold only 3-7, mean 5, ideas or thoughts at a time, and once it is full all that happens is it either shuts down accepting more or just drops one to pick up another until something gets moved into long term.

Also, signal-to-noise ratio is traditionally an intensity measure, not a content measure. It primarily has to do with modern detection theory. It does not have a lot to do with content.

I would offer that one needs to keep the message simple but rich, to make sure ideas are well defined and distinguishable, and that they not come too fast and saturate working memory. This is one of the reasons in decision briefings to know one's audience. If that decision maker has a working memory level of three then you structure and give a very different briefing than if the level is seven.

[Andrew]

Perhaps it makes more sense to think of the use of the signal-to-noise ratio here as an analogy. All the research I have seen supports the idea that irrelevant images or details ("noise") is harmful to communication ("signal"). By pushing for a high signal-to-noise ratio, I understand Reynolds to mean reduce or eliminate irrelevant material entirely.

"Simple but rich" is a good way of putting it.

Question: how do you determine your decision maker's working memory level?