There’s a lot of stuff around blaming PowerPoint for bad presentations and I recently found another example of what are – undoubtedly – spectacularly bad slides (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/powerpoint-slides-pentagon-ash-carter). But I’m not sure I agree with the underlying assumptions and tenets behind bash-the-software.
Yes, yes, it’s crap software. It’s bug-ridden and has an interface that makes square wheels look like a good idea… We’re agreed on that. It makes it all too easy to create crap presentations. But there’s a counter argument that PowerPoint is just a tool – like a gun. And just like a gun it can be used for doing good things as well as bad. (Personally I find that guns are far more often used to do bad things than good, and the same is true of PowerPoint ;) and there’s no doubt that PowerPoint makes it easier to create sloppily conceived slides onto the screen…).
but – and it’s a big but….
I want to go even one stage further than defend PowerPoint by saying it’s only a tool and actually “blame” the presenters and what they’re trying to say. Let’s take an example to illustrate my point. Have a look at the first slide in the post I’ve just liked to above:
Bloody awful PowerPoint slide
Think about it for a second. What software could possibly cope with such a badly considered, ill-conceived, messy and unworkable concept map? In other words, I’m not sure it’s fair to blame the software at all because, basically, what PowerPoint is being asked to show is often rubbish.
Sure, PowerPoint will often grind material to the lowest common denominator of tedium but nothing is going to save something as badly conceived as the stuff included in that figure – not because it’s badly drawn (though it is!) but because the actual content is, well, bollocks.
It’s not as if the figure works even if you have it on a piece of paper in front of you and can study it for hours. (I’ve tried, and even with a PhD in this sort of thing it gave me a headache!). It’s not even as if the figure is badly drawn (well, it is partially, because it is very! ;) ) but it’s more, far more, because what was trying to be explained was stupidly conceived in the first place.
So here’s a thought. If you can’t explain it on a well-conceived, well-drawn PowerPoint slide might the problem be with what you’re trying to do in the the first place?
And before you get all upitty about it, if that cap fits… ;) What that means in practice is that there’s a two way street between the quality of ideas/information/content and the quality of the presentation. Not even Freddie Mercury could make an utterly awful piece of music sound great. (And before anyone starts jumping and down to pretend that Saint Freddie and Queen weren’t great, know that you’re wrong and your comments won’t get published – or at least they’ll get edited!).
As Einstein is reputed to once have said: if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t really understand it – but perhaps it’s also true that if you can’t explain it simply, it simply isn’t worth explaining…
