The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method

Extreme Presentation blog - top 10 posts

Earlier this year, the Extreme Presentation blog reached its fourth birthday. To celebrate, I would like to offer a “best of” listing.  I took the ten most popular posts as measured by past six months' traffic, and with some minor modification, here they are; they provide a pretty good cross section of the work I've done on this blog in the past four years. 

#1: Chart Chooser 

This was overwhelmingly the most popular post I have ever made (in large part thanks to it being picked up by Lifehacker, via Digital Inspiration, via Chris Lyons).The post features a one-page diagram that helps you identify which chart to choose given what you are trying to show with your data.  Volunteers from around the world have since translated it into Italian, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, German, Russian, Spanish, Chinese (which alone would have ranked among my top ten posts), Japanese, and Portuguese. See them all here.  

#2: 36 Slide Layouts that Pass the Squint Test 

If you want your slides to be understood quickly, then make sure that each one passes the squint test (see #4 below).  Here I posted 36 examples of layouts that pass the squint test, in downloadable PowerPoint form.  Layouts that pass the squint test are particularly important for Conference Room style presentations (see #5 below). 

I later added a version for PowerPoint 2007, which uses the SmartArt feature; these are available here.    

#3: The P&G One-Page Memo

Not strictly about presentations per se, but still on the broader topic of communication, I blogged some time ago about how to use the Procter & Gamble one-page memo discipline, which is something I learned over 20 years ago when I started my career at P&G, and which I still find very useful.  

 #4: The Squint Test: Creating Simplicity of Design and Complexity of Data

Among the many interesting things that Edward Tufte has written about in his four treatises on information display, none is more powerful, to my mind, than his two key elements of graphical design. Tufte writes: "What makes for such graphical elegance? ... Good design has two key elements: Graphical elegance is often found in simplicity of design and complexity of data."

Simplicity of design and complexity of data. These two elements, it seems to me, are at the heart of everything that Tufte teaches. And I think that the second one - complexity of data - explains much of his dislike for PowerPoint. PowerPoint, used in the usual way, does not encourage complexity of data.  The challenge, of course, is how do you combine simplicity of design with complexity of data? One answer, I think, lies in what designers call the "squint test": when you squint at your page, so that you cannot read any of the text, do you still 'get' something about the page?

#5: Ballroom vs. Conference Room style presentations

Each presentation situation calls for a particular presentation idiom—a form of expression and a set of design principles. Contrary to the popular complaint, the problem with PowerPoint™ is not that it forces you to design a presentation in a particular way. On the contrary, it doesn’t. And that's the problem: PowerPoint allows you to mix design elements from different idioms, which, I believe, accounts for much of the ugliness and ineffectiveness of most presentations.

There are two fundamental presentation idioms, which I call Ballroom style and Conference Room style. The Ballroom style presentation is what most typical PowerPoint presentations are trying to be: colorful, vibrant, attention-grabbing, and (sometimes) noisy. They typically take place in a large, dark room such as a hotel ballroom.

The Conference Room style presentation is much more understated: less use of color, more details on each page, printed rather than projected, and more suited to your average corporate meeting or conference room.

My latest take on this topic is posted on Presenting to Physicians, Scientists, Engineers… and Marketers. 

#6: Seven Deadly Mistakes Presenters Make, and How to Avoid Them  

The seven deadly mistakes are:

1. Setting presentation objectives in terms of what the presenter intends to do, rather than how the audience should change their minds and actions as a result of the presentation.
2. Focusing on what you want from your audience, rather than on how your presentation will help them solve a pressing problem of theirs.
3. Only including evidence that supports your recommendation, instead of providing an objective evaluation of all the evidence, for and against.
4. [more]   

#7: How Do I Make Boring Data Interesting?  

It's easy to be passionate when your material is inherently fascinating. What do you do when you're dealing with boring data?

#8: Visualization Taxonomies  

With the explosion of interest in information visualization, I find taxonomies of visualization approaches to be very useful in organizing knowledge and facilitating use of different visualization approaches.

This post identifies three useful taxonomies. 

Dan Roam's Visual Thinking Codex (left), from his delightful book The Back of the Napkin, strikes an excellent balance between simplicity and comprehensiveness.  The Codex can be found on p. 141 of Dan's book.  With his permission, I have reproduced it in my blog post (although I highly recommend that you get a copy of the book).

Also included in this post are the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, hosted by the impressive Swiss Visual Literacy project, and of course my own Chart Chooser (#1 above). 

#9: Slide Design in 2009  

What would I like to see in slide design in 2009? I would like to see presenters realize that there is a place for simplicity and a place for lots of detail--and the main thing is to know when to use each.

[more]

#10: Handling Transitions

How should the presenter handle the transition between slides within the handout? 

One way to solve this is to vary your language.  Some times you'll say "turn to the next page"; other times "on page 3 we will see how... etc." Keep in mind that with conference room style presentations, you end up with far fewer slides than with  ballroom style:  typically between 3 and 6, and occasionally even 2 or just 1 outstanding slide.  So your audience won't be turning the page very often.

An even better approach is to design your presentation storyline using the S.Co.R.E. approach (Situation, Complication, Resolution, Example), in which case your transition is actually part of the story. [more]

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Thanks for following this blog--I hope you are finding it valuable.  If you have any thoughts about anything you'd like to see here, please feel free to comment on this post.

Maytag

May 8, 2009 update: I received a call from a supervisor at Maytag, who had read this blog post. They have now agreed to refund the full amount of the parts.   I still wish that this whole thing never happened, but I am satisfied with this outcome.

The original post:   

I've never done this before, and I probably won't again, because branding, product quality, and customer service don't have much to do with presentation design. 

But I am just so annoyed that I had to vent.  Less than two years after we bought our house, which had all new appliances, including a high-end Maytag dishwasher, the dishwasher broke.  I called Maytag, and they told me that although this expensive machine was already out of its warranty.  Fine, so we would have to pay for the repairs.  The Maytag repairman came, and charged me $90 to tell me that the thing needed a new control board. Maytag said that the control board was nationally out of stock and I would have to wait four to six weeks (does this give you a hint that this type of dishwasher breaks down a lot?!).  Well, we are a large family and would rather not be without a dishwasher for six weeks, especially since we had a new baby at the time and were busy enough as it was.  So I told them to forget it and that I would throw out their dishwasher and buy another one, which I did (from Sears).

Several weeks later, the part arrives, and my credit card is billed.  Today I spent about two hours on the phone working my way through customer service and the parts department, but unfortunately (for me) they don't accept returns of electronic parts--even though they should never have sent it in the first place.  They did agree to send me a $75 check for my trouble, which is less than half the cost of the parts.  

Why am I annoyed?  Because a $1000 dishwasher broke after less than 2 years of use, and because they were out of stock on the part, and because, after I told them I was going to throw their dishwasher out, they still sent me the part and charged me for it, and now won't take it back.

On their website I found the following: 

Maytag continues its relentless pursuit to build the highest-quality and most dependable machines for you, our customer  

They may be pursuing that goal, but there sure as heck are not reaching it, or even coming close.

It turns out I am not alone in my disappointment.  In case any of you are ever inclined to make the big mistake of buying a Maytag or Whirlpool brand appliance, check out the following:

http://web.mac.com/roslynholcomb/iWeb/Site/Blog/172E339A-3AEB-11DC-A956-0003937BDE2C.html

http://www.my3cents.com/showReview.cgi?id=7999

http://kordless.blogspot.com/2004/10/maytag-sucks.html

http://www1.epinions.com/review/Maytag_Jetclean_II_Undercounter_Dishwasher_MDB8600AWB_Dishwashers/content_211005181572

http://www.dfwstangs.net/forums/showthread.php?t=290855

http://www.planetfeedback.com/maytag+corporation/customer+service/maytag+sucks/251544

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/newton-ia/TJLHTT1KJ24EMRVEM

http://fromhuskiestohusbands.blogspot.com/2009/04/maytag-sucks.html

http://lindarella.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/breaking-up-with-the-maytag-repairman/

http://themommyrollercoaster.com/index.php?s=handcuf

If you want more, search for "Maytag sucks" or "I hate Maytag."  Or for more brands from the same fine company, search for "Whirlpool sucks" or "I hate Whirlpool."

Venting over.  Back to presentation design.