It
is easy to confuse an audience when you cram way too much information into a PowerPoint
slide. On July 22, 2015 I blogged about how It always is okay to break the
rules when you are told to blindly follow something like Guy Kawasaki’s
10/20/30 Rule and only use ten slides. Instead you should use just enough
slides to tell your story clearly.
At Presentation Guru on June 22, 2020 there is a very useful article by Jim Harvey titled What are the simple rules that help us design better visual aids? His third point is to have just one idea per slide.
He starts with the example shown above, which is trying to make three different points that instead should be on separate slides. I agree, but have some different ideas on how to accomplish that goal.
Jim’s first makeover slide, shown above, uses the same quote but adds a headline above it. But he unnecessarily cut off the right end of the motor, and left a lot of white space. I used the whole motor. Also, he never told us that a VSD is a variable speed drive.
Jim’s second makeover slide used the information from the table on the original slide. He put the lifetime total cost at the top, but left the largest percent cost for energy at the bottom. The costs in pounds really belong in another column from the percentages. And there is no cost shown for the variable speed drive (VSD). We can’t talk about a benefit without revealing what it costs. I assumed it was the same as for the motor. Then I reordered to put the energy cost just below the total cost.
Jim’s third makeover slide showed the two percentage savings from the original, and left the tiny formula indicating that the power is proportional to the speed cubed - with no explanation. You might have naively expected that the power would be proportional to the speed. Then you would expect that reducing the speed by 20% just would reduce the power by 20% (as shown by the dashed blue line). It instead is reduced by 49%! I show that by a pair of slides – first a graph and then a more detailed table. The nonlinear relationship shows how there are massive opportunities for savings.
Then when he redid the box with three smaller ones inside, he used overlapping circles. But those usually are interpreted as being Venn diagrams by scientists or engineers.
At Presentation Guru on June 22, 2020 there is a very useful article by Jim Harvey titled What are the simple rules that help us design better visual aids? His third point is to have just one idea per slide.
He starts with the example shown above, which is trying to make three different points that instead should be on separate slides. I agree, but have some different ideas on how to accomplish that goal.
Jim’s first makeover slide, shown above, uses the same quote but adds a headline above it. But he unnecessarily cut off the right end of the motor, and left a lot of white space. I used the whole motor. Also, he never told us that a VSD is a variable speed drive.
Jim’s second makeover slide used the information from the table on the original slide. He put the lifetime total cost at the top, but left the largest percent cost for energy at the bottom. The costs in pounds really belong in another column from the percentages. And there is no cost shown for the variable speed drive (VSD). We can’t talk about a benefit without revealing what it costs. I assumed it was the same as for the motor. Then I reordered to put the energy cost just below the total cost.
Jim’s third makeover slide showed the two percentage savings from the original, and left the tiny formula indicating that the power is proportional to the speed cubed - with no explanation. You might have naively expected that the power would be proportional to the speed. Then you would expect that reducing the speed by 20% just would reduce the power by 20% (as shown by the dashed blue line). It instead is reduced by 49%! I show that by a pair of slides – first a graph and then a more detailed table. The nonlinear relationship shows how there are massive opportunities for savings.
His
fourth point is to use animations for complex ideas/visuals. He redid the slide
shown above at the left using SmartArt to produce four rectangular boxes, each
containing three smaller boxes. Unfortunately he left off the original colors! That’s
okay as an unfinished example though.
Then when he redid the box with three smaller ones inside, he used overlapping circles. But those usually are interpreted as being Venn diagrams by scientists or engineers.
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