“Do only what is necessary to convey what is essential. Carefully eliminate elements that distract from the essential whole…. Clutter, bulk and erudition confuse perception…, whereas simplicity allows clear and direct attention.” −Richard Powell

In my last post, I mentioned the “elevator pitch” test, in which you practice speaking your presentation to a friend in 45 seconds. This important exercise forces you to boil down all your crazy, rambling ideas to the bare essentials.

Including too much information in a presentation is like underlining everything on a page. If everything is important, than nothing is important. If everything is a priority than nothing is a priority. You must be ruthless in your efforts to simplify, but not dumb down, the message to its absolute core. [1]

They haven’t heard a thing you’ve said

With a hundred things fighting for attention throughout a persons day, you’d be lucky if your audience remembered one thing from your 10 minute presentation. What do you want that one thing to be? What is the absolute smallest granule of knowledge that you want to impart to your audience? That is your core message.

In their book, “Made to Stick,” the Heath brothers explore what makes messages sticky and memorable. They say the biggest obstacle to “sticky” messages is the Curse of Knowledge:

“The Curse of Knowledge is the condition whereby the deliverer of the message cannot imagine what it’s like not to possess his level of background knowledge on the topic. When he speaks in abstractions to the audience, it makes perfect sense to him, but to him alone.” [2]

Our love/hate relationship with simplicity

As the world becomes more complex, people crave simplicity. They love it. The iPod won because it was simple. Simple is good, simple is easy, simple is viral. Complex messages are hard to understand, and are hard to tell a friend. Simple ideas become viral because they’re easy to recall, explain, and relate to.

But we also hate simplicity. Simple ideas can be mistaken as shallow, dumb, and lazy. You don’t want to appear dumb and lazy do you? Then you better beef up your PowerPoint with more facts and figures. Why do so many product feature lists say “and much more” at the end? When in doubt, add more and say more, right? But this just dilutes the core message.

Disclaimer: I am the same person who is in charge of our website, and as I write this I do realize I need to take some of this advice to heart. Our current website is a little complex and requires simplification.

Learn to love simplicity through restraint

Lately I have been experimenting with a time management system called the Pomodoro technique. I’m working in strict 25 minute blocks with mandatory 5 minute breaks in between. The idea is that the mind is kept from multi-task fatigue by active rejection of interruptions and laser focus on a single task until the pomodoro timer rings. I’ve found the result to be greater efficiency and more awareness of where my time is going through out the day.

The reason this system works is because of the constraints. “In the field of design there is the belief that with more constraints, better solutions are revealed.” [3] Professional designers live with hundreds of constraints on a daily basis, because that’s how the design world works. Nondesigners, on the other hand, can easily get frustrated or go overboard with all the various options, effects, colors, and templates afforded to them by modern presentation software.

The solution is to impose strict restraints on your presentation and stick to them. This will help creativity and simplicity. For example, in 2003 a presentation style emerged from Japan called Pecha Kucha. You are allowed 20 slides which display for 20 seconds on an auto-rotation timer. That’s 6 minutes and 40 seconds to give a presentation and that’s it. It has become a global phenomenon in 80 cities, and is great practice for honing your presentation skills. [4]

Restraint means focus

In summation, use the elevator technique to find your core message. Then continuously reevaluate your entire presentation based on the core message. Does this awesome slide I worked so hard on, full of facts and figures strongly contribute to my core message? If the answer is not an immediately YES, then get rid of it. The simpler and clearer your message, the higher probability your audience will remember something.

Notes/Credits

This article was inspired by an awesome book:
Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. It’s highly recommended!

• [1] Page 77 – “If everything is important, nothing is important.” I love this line.
• [2] Page 76 – I suffer from this disease frequently. When I’m working on a project for too long, I lose perspective on it. The six principles of “SUCCESs” help fight this disease: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions and Stories. Learn more.
• [3] Page 39 – We all hate restrictions, but perhaps we can learn how to use them for our benefit.
• [4] Learn more about Pecha Kucha here: http://www.pecha-kucha.org. I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m eager to on my next presentation.

Photo Credits: Ogimoki, Erato

We’ve all been there − been forced to listen to a terrible presentation while day dreaming about killing the power to the entire building. For a generation, we’ve grown up with PowerPoint, and now, we have a generation of bad presentation-givers. Disagree? You might one of them; most of us are without knowing it. Seth Godin, a marketing and presentation guru, got so fed up he even compiled a book on it.

In an era of online presentations, making eye contact and reading your audience presents a large hurdle. It’s even more critical that the speakers’ delivery and visual aids work as a team. 

Why is PowerPoint so bad?

Most PowerPoint presentations are mind-numbingly dull and ineffective because PowerPoint encourages bad habits. It guides users into creating a presentation like a high school essay: outline form, topic, bullet, bullet, bullet. Logical, but boring and ineffective as a visual aid. Slides are loaded with long titles, a lot of text, and lots of bullets − but people can’t read and listen at the same time! You already know this, yet somehow still think more than 6 words on a slide is OK. Why? Because everyones doing it![1]

PowerPoint has become the speakers crutch and centerpiece of today’s presentations, yet it is the speaker who should be the main attraction (and has much more to offer). Visual aids are supposed to enhance, support, and direct the audience back to the speaker. If most of the speech is written on the slide, guess what? Nobodies listening.

Imagine two speakers, each one standing in front of one of these slides:

.

Which one is are you paying attention to? Which ones makes you think: what is this person going to say next? How does this image tie in to the subject? Are those kids safe on the cliffside? The slide on the right helps make the presentation interactive. The slide on the left, well, I already know what he’s going to say, so I’ll check my phone for missed calls.

Yes, this example may be a little extreme. I’m not saying use zero text in your slides, I’m just making the point between detracting from, and supporting a presentation.

OK, text is bad, now what?

No, text isn’t bad, bad habits are. Cramming too much text into a slide is just one of them. A great presentation has much to do with with the process of planning. I’ll go into more detail about these in following posts, but for now, here are those five tips I promised:

1. Create a handout (for the end) − This is a big one. Don’t try to get smart and use the same slides for your presentation as the ones for a “take home” non-narrated document. Terrible idea. A slide makes a terrible document, and a document makes a terrible slide.[2] Create a “leave behind” note page, or summary. Tell your audience you will email it to them at the end. This does two things:
   1. It eliminates your craving to include every fact and figure you can think of in your slides, and
   2. It allows the audience to focus on you and not worry about taking notes.
2. Get emotional − Create slides to demonstrate emotional proof of your speaking. They should reinforce, not repeat your words. Save accuracy, facts, and charts for the handout. If you can show a slide that invokes an emotion that links to the words you are speaking, you will create an anchor for those facts to be recalled later.
3. 6 Word Max − Do you want them to read or listen? If this is a presentation which you will be speaking, don’t distract them away from your core message. Remember the handout? “Never put more than 6 words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex, that this rule needs to be broken.” [3]
4. What’s your point? Why should I care? − Those are the two questions going through your audiences head throughout your presentation. Ask yourself these questions over and over as you create your presentation. Presenters are usually so close to their material, the question of why the audience should care, seems obvious, when it may not be. [4]
5. Tell A Story − Don’t spew out facts and reasons, tell a story. Everybody loves stories. Pick a friend, and practice your story with a 30 second time limit. If you can’t convey your central point in an “elevator pitch” test, don’t even think about starting to work on your presentation yet. Find your absolute central point first, then go from there. [5]

What do you think? What are the main differences you find with presenting in person vs. online? Here at Vyew, we are learning how to be presenters of our own product, and we still have a ways to go. Got any more tips? What tricks work for you? Leave a comment.

Next: Continue to “Crafting a Clear Message”

Notes/Credits

This article was inspired by an awesome book:
Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. It’s highly recommended!

• [1] “PowerPoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer, but it’s not, it’s actually a dismal failure. Almost every PowerPoint presentation sucks rotten eggs.” (Reynolds 11) Steve Jobs once said the computer is “the bicycle for the mind.” A bicycle multiplies your own power. Reynolds argues that PowerPoint has become a “car for the mind, with prepackaged formulas that make your ideas soft.” (Reynolds 47)
• [2] “Slides are slides. Documents are documents. They aren’t the same thing. Attempts to merge them result in what I call the “slideument.” The creation of a slideument stems from a desire to save time…. Intentions are good, but results are bad.” (Reynolds 68)
• [3] Take it from Seth Godin – create slides that reinforce your words, not repeat them. (Reynolds 20)
• [4] “It’s hard enough for presenters to find their core message and express it in a way that is unambiguously understood. But why does it matter? This is where people really stumble. This is because the presenter is so close to his material that the question of why it should matter simply seems obvious, too obvious to make explicit.” (Reynolds 62)
• [6] “Can you pass the elevator test? …This exercise forces you to ‘sell’ your message in 30-45 seconds… True, you may never have to, but practicing what you would do in such a case forces you to get your message down and make your overall content tighter and clearer.” (Reynolds 64)

Photo Credits: Alisdair, OliverAlex

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