Presentation Zen

Japanese cuisine and the art of presentation

This year we were in California for the New Year holidays. But last year, we celebrated the new year in Nara, Japan. New Year's is called Oshogatsu and is an important holiday in Japan and a time to be with family. A centerpiece of Oshogatsu in Japan is food, particularly Osechi Ryori. Checkout the photos of the Osechi Ryori bentos on the Bento Blog. The items of the bento taste great, but what is amazing to me is the thought given to how the items in the bento should look. Whether it's an expensive New Year's bento or a simple "ekiben" bento purchased at the train station, presentation matters.

Sushi is good for you.
The best sushi I have had in the US has been in New York, San Francisco, LA, and Honolulu. But even the best "American sushi" — and some of it is very good — just does not stack up to the experience of sushi in Japan. In general, food in Japan is incredibly good, incredibly fresh, and always well presented. At least once in your life, you owe it to yourself to travel to Japan and have a true "sushi experience."

Geoffroy, a Presentation Zen reader, sent me a link over the Christmas break of a video which takes a tongue-in-cheek look at dining in a Japanese sushiya. (Try here if the link does not work — thanks, Barry.) I share this with you because I think it's a good example of how narration and images can work well together to tell a story. In this case, the images are in the form of video, but the same thing could be done with many still images along with the narration from a live speaker. With the help of images in a PowerPoint/Keynote deck, you can imagine a presenter — an intercultural trainer, perhaps — teaching and discussing the "how" and the "why" of dining out with business colleagues in Japan. (Below are two samples of what slides might look like if you put this content into a standup presentation.)

 

Now, this particular video is in fact quite weird because it aims at being ironic — even sardonic — by mixing a blend of truth and accuracy with parody, exaggeration, and intentional falsehoods. What is true and what is false in this video presentation is obvious to Japanese and to others familiar with the culture, but perhaps not to others. The Japanese are concerned with doing things "the right way." Japan is a "high uncertainty avoidance" culture where much care is often given to ritual, manners, and procedure. The creators of this video, then, are poking a little fun at themselves. But please do not take the contents of the video seriously. I reference this video (with tongue in cheek) only to show how images/video can be used effectively to present a point, to teach, or to demo. (Note: video appears to no longer be available...)

Learn more about sushi at the Sushi-Master and from the Sushi FAQ.

Japanese ryori: the visual matters
And speaking of food, let me say again that one can learn a lot about visual presentation by dining out in Japan. The Japanese are very concerned with the outer, with how things appear, with how they look. You can see this in everything from fashion, to architecture, to the Zen arts, such as the art of tea ceremony (Sado). Food is no exception. The way food looks and how it is presented is as important as how it tastes.

Over the weekend we went for a long walk amid light snow flurries along Tetsugaku no Michi (Philosophy Road) in Kyoto. While on our walk, we stopped for a coffee/tea along the path of Tetsugaku no Michi. Even in this small café serving simple cakes, presentation mattered. You can find attention to visual details in Japan even in a small out-of-the-way cafe.

   

   

Later, we took the opportunity to have Kyo-ryori for dinner in downtown Kyoto. The Kyoto restaurant where we dined was nothing special. Just a typical Japanese restaurant really, except that they specialized in Kyo-ryori. Even in this humble restaurant, however, you can see (below) how wonderfully the dishes are prepared and displayed. The presentation of the dishes adds tremendously to the taste of the cuisine and enjoyment of the overall experience. Nothing is superfluous or mere decoration.

   

You can see even better pictures of Kyo-ryori here.

The size of your deck is not important

A lot of people ask me how many slides they should use in their "PowerPoint deck." That is, how many slides should be used for a single live presentation? My answer these days is "between zero and a thousand."

When I gave my "Art of Presentations" presentation last week at P&G in Kobe (for ACCJ), someone asked me at the end how many slides I had used. So I asked people what they thought. How may slides did I use, I asked (I spoke for 55 minutes). Guesses ranged from 40 to 60. The answer was 285. The audience was at once surprised and amused. Then I asked them, imagine if I had said something like this at the start of my presentation: "Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming. I have 285 slides to go through tonight, so let's get started...." The audience burst out laughing. One man said, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that he would have ran for the exit doors had I opened that way. And with that, the audience got it: In my presentation, the number of slides was obviously not important. The slides simply supported the talk. People were not conscious of how many slides they had seen or "where I was in the deck."

It's not the slides, it's "the moment"
Once people start counting slides, all is lost. The focus should be on the message and the moment. And "the moment" is a kind of synchronicity among presenter, audience, and supporting visuals that allows the audience and presenter to have a connection that is more like conversation and sharing and less like a didactic stream of bullets, "chart junk," and a ceaseless, incessant "blah, blah, blah" that an audience must endure. A presentation approach which resembles a speaker "getting through a deck of slides" treats the audience like a room full of video recorders. Mutli-media learning theory and cognitive science suggest, however, that this approach is not inline with how people most effectively handle new information. (See this older article, and works by professor Richard Mayer, such as this book).

It's the wrong question
If your audience is conscious of the number of slides you are using — "too many" or "too few" — then that usually means you have inappropriately designed your visuals or are using them in a way that is not helping much. It's not the number that is the problem. I have seen both good and bad presentations that used no more than 10 slides, and I have seen both good and bad presentations that used more than 250 slides. I talked about this idea in my post on the Lessig Method a couple of months ago.
   
OK, but seriously, how many slides do I suggest? Honestly, it is not something I worry about. There are a million things to worry about, but the size of my "PowerPoint deck" is not one of them. So, maybe the best answer I can give you is to use the "appropriate amount" of visual support. And only you (and your coach if you have one) will know what that is. As John Loori says in The Zen of Creativity, "...make a choice about what's important, and let go of the rest." And the number of slides is not important.

Related Presentation Zen links
Are we asking the right questions?
Should lectures be conversational?

Spreading the word

Seth Godin says, "The more you give away, the more it's worth" (see original slide). I agree. If you want your ideas to spread big, then you've got to evangelize and get others to want to evangelize your idea or cause. You can't pay evangelists though. You can't pay your friends to love you and you can't pay strangers (or customers) to love your ideas. Apple User Groups,* for example, are incredible communities full of unpaid "Mavens" (a la the Tipping Point) that help spread knowledge about Apple products and technology, provide invaluable tech support (that Apple can't provide), and have "converted" a great many people "to the Macintosh way." What I'm talking about goes beyond just "selling" your idea, though. So what's the difference between a sales approach and an evangelism approach? According to the "father of evangelism marketing," Guy Kawasaki, "Sales is rooted in what's good for me. Evangelism is rooted in what's good for you." (See Father of Evangelism Marketing).

I'm trying to spread an idea. I'm trying to do my very small part to rid the world of awful, ineffective, time-wasting "PowerPoint presentations" that leave both presenter and audience feeling uninspired (at best). The idea that I'm trying to spread is that conventional wisdom about presenting is completely off kilter. Borrowing from the works and examples from such people as Lessig, Kawasaki, Jobs, Atkinson, Tufte, Sierra, Takahashi, and many others, and drawing on influences from the worlds of visual communication and design, Zen, cognitive science, multimedia, etc., I am attempting to shake things up a bit. The aim is to expose people to other ways of presenting and to get them thinking differently about their presentations. The more people hear me (and others like me) speak the more valuable this idea becomes. So, in the spirit of Guy Kawasaki's call that we revolutionaries "poop like elephants" (give of our time and spread our ideas generously), I gladly "give it away" when I can. And so do many, many others. It just makes sense to do so.

Evidence of my "pooping"
A few people have asked how the "free presentations" went last week, so here are some pictures from two of my presentations where I "gave it away."

    
Above: Speaking here in Osaka for the Osaka Sister City Association. Really nice people. Had a chance to mingle for an hour after the presentation over some tea and delicious desserts.

   
Above: Presenting for ACCJ at the Far East Headquarters of Proctor & Gamble in Kobe. A crowd of about 115 in attendance on a Friday night. (They had to bring in extra chairs). I spoke in English and had a simultaneous interpreter in the booth above. Some in the audience listened to the interpretation through headphones. The auditorium feels kind of like a mini United Nations. Wonderful place.

   
Above: I was happy a few of my Gaidai students attended the event. From left to right, Rafael (Philippines), Julie (Kenya), me (USA), Jesse (Canada), and Jose (Ecuador). (The image on screen is available at istockphoto.com).

      
Above: Since the last time I presented at P&G, they added a monitor in front of the stage which mirrors what's on the large, bright screen behind the speaker. This is a wonderful thing. No excuse now for anyone presenting there to hide behind the podium. Great facility. I even made a PDF of my Keynote slides and loaded those on the house PC. That way if my Mac froze (there's always a first time) I could just press a button and switch to the PC already connected and ready to go.

*(Although you can not pay evangelist groups, such as Apple user groups, I would like to see Apple engage these user groups more and make them feel a little more "part of the team.")

The "Microsoft Method" of presentations

Microsoft did not invent PowerPoint. That honor goes to a small company called Forethought, which released PowerPoint for the Mac in 1987. The company was then purchased by Microsoft and the Windows version of PowerPoint eventually hit the market in 1990...and the world hasn't been the same since.

But did Microsoft invent the wordy, bulletpoint-ridden PowerPoint slide approach, the approach ridiculed by Edward Tufte and so many others? I don't have the answer to that, but judging from the presentation visuals (slides) used by high-profile Microsoft executives, the company is certainly perpetuating this approach, an approach we'll call the "Microsoft Method."

Examples of the "Microsoft Method" of presentations
You can find a plethora of the actual PowerPoint files used in many Microsoft presentations, including those by CEO, Steve Ballmer and Chairman, Bill Gates. The company also provides many video streams to past presentations, often including written transcripts.

On November 7, Steve Ballmer kicked off the "Ready Launch Tour." The audience for this presentation and others on the tour consist mainly of developers and database administrators. The keynote presentation was at a high-level and not overly technical. The presentation was more of an opportunity for the CEO to show his leadership, vision, and what it all means. I don't have any problems with the content of Steve Ballmer's keynote (that's not the focus of this blog anyway). My focus here is only on the slides he chose to use to support his messages. Below I show a few slides from Steve Ballmer's keynote (you can download his PPT file here). But first, allow me to introduce another concept from the Zen aesthetic we can refer to when examining these visuals and our own visuals.

Shibumi
Shibumi is a principle that can be applied to many aspects of life.  Concerning visual communication and graphic design, shibumi represents elegant simplicity and articulate brevity, an understated elegance. In Wabi-Sabi Style, authors James and Sandra Crowley comment on the Japanese deep appreciation of beauty:

Their (Japanese) conceptualization relegates elaborate ornamentation and vivid color usage to the bottom of the taste levels...excess requires no real thought or creativity. The highest level of taste moves beyond the usage of brilliant colors and heavy ornamentation to a simple and subdued refinement that is the beauty of shibumi, which represents the ultimate in good taste through conscious reserve. This is the original "less is more" concept. Less color — subdued and elegant usage of color, less clutter...

                                        — Wabi Sabi Style

I do not suggest you judge a presentation visual the same way you do a work of art, of course. But understanding the essence of shibumi can have practical applications in your creative work. And I believe presentations are best viewed as creative endeavors — all of it — preparation, design, and delivery.

Examples from Steve Ballmer's Nov 7 Keynote

     
Above left: Saying thank you is a wonderful, gracious thing to do, especially at the beginning. If you use a visual for this, a simple "Thank You" without the noise of a busy template, catch phrase (Ready), and three different logos would be better. I like the background color for this visual, but it doesn't fit with the bulk of the slides which have a familiar blue background. Above right: Suddenly a blue background. A lot of images to convey a simple point. The images of people in the bubbles are labeled "People"... in case we weren't sure those were images of people?

     
Above left: It would be better if Steve had broken this up into three slides with declarative titles for each, less colors and fewer bullets. Above right: I get it, but a simpler, more elegant visual was surely possible.

               
Above left: Many colors. Gradients. 3-D effects. Small text. When you are one of the most powerful business figures in the world, it's better if your presentation visuals do not resemble a cereal box.

     
Above left: More 3-D graphics, gradients, colors. Above right: Nothing closes big quite like a bulleted list on a "Summary" slide.

It all matters
You might say, "So the PowerPoints aren't great? So what? Content is what matters." Content does matter a very great deal. Great content is essential. But my point is: It all matters.

Microsoft says the sky's the limit for us consumers. Work can be creative. We can help. I want to believe them. Really I do. Yet, when given the opportunity to show how one of their most visible products can actually be used practically and harmoniously to help their own speakers present important ideas, they revert back to PowerPoint-as-usual. Uninspiring...and typical.

A Flash pitch on the Microsoft "your potential" website says "we stand in awe of your potential." Their whole campaign evolves around this one message: “Your potential. Our passion.” And templates, auto-content wizards and "paper-clip guy" are suppose to help people be more creative?

What must it be like inside the Redmond campus? If top management is implying that this is how best to present, then what incentive do regular workers have for being different, creative...and more effective? But surely not all the people at Microsoft, a company which attracts great minds from across the planet, agree with the typical "death-by-PPT" approach?

Microsoft has smart, creative employees who get it
I think it's very cool that Microsoft allows employees to blog on the company. That's smart. One new MS employee, Prof Elizabeth Lane Lawley, currently working in Redmond on sabbatical from RIT comments today on Microsoft's love affair with the PPT deck in her post called The Culture of The Deck:

"There are many things I’ve been delighted and impressed by during the nearly five months I’ve now spent at Microsoft. However, there have also been a few things that I’ve found extraordinarily disheartening. One of the latter has been the organizational dependence on “the deck” (that is, PowerPoint files) as the standard mechanism for conveying nearly all information."

                                         — Elizabeth Lane Lawley

The professor goes on to say that the Presentation Zen site, Beyond Bullet Points and Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint should be required reading for employees. Right on, Elizabeth!

Here's hoping a new way of presenting will one day make it up to the top levels of Microsoft management.

Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic

As a follow up to yesterday's post on Bill Gates' presentation style, I thought it would be useful to examine briefly the two contrasting visual approaches employed by Gates and Jobs in their presentations while keeping key aesthetic concepts found in Zen in mind. I believe we can use many of the concepts in Zen and Zen aesthetics to help us compare their presentation visuals as well as help us improve our own visuals. My point in comparing Jobs and Gates is not to poke fun but to learn.

Simplicity
A key tenet of the Zen aesthetic is kanso or simplicity. In the kanso concept beauty, grace, and visual elegance are achieved by elimination and omission. Says artist designer and architect Dr. Koichi Kawana, "Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means." When you examine your visuals, then, can you say that you are getting the maximum impact with a minimum of graphic elements, for example? When you take a look at Jobs' slides and Gates' slides, how do they compare for kanso?

"Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means."
                                 — Dr. Koichi Kawana

Naturalness
The aesthetic concept of naturalness or shizen "prohibits the use of elaborate designs and over refinement" according to Kawana. Restraint, then, is a beautiful thing. Talented jazz musicians, for example, know never to overplay but instead to be forever mindful of the other musicians and find their own space within the music and within the moment they are sharing. Graphic designers show restraint by including only what is necessary to communicate the particular message for the particular audience. Restraint is hard. Complication and elaboration are easy...and are common.

The suggestive mode of expression is a key Zen aesthetic. Dr. Kawana, commenting on the design of traditional Japanese gardens says:

"The designer must adhere to the concept of miegakure since Japanese believe that in expressing the whole the interest of the viewer is lost."
                                  — Dr. Koichi Kawana

In the world of PowerPoint presentations, then, you do not always need to visually spell everything out. You do not need to (nor can you) pound every detail into the head of each member of your audience either visually or verbally. Instead, the combination of your words, along with the visual images you project, should motivate the viewer and arouse his imagination helping him to empathize with your idea and visualize your idea far beyond what is visible in the ephemeral PowerPoint slide before him. The Zen aesthetic values include (but are not limited to):

• Simplicity
• Subtlety
• Elegance
• Suggestive rather than the descriptive or obvious
• Naturalness (i.e., nothing artificial or forced),
• Empty space (or negative space)
• Stillness, Tranquility
• Eliminating the non-essential

Gates and Jobs: lessons in contrasts
Take a look at some of the typical visuals used by Steve Jobs and those used by Bill Gates. As you look at them and compare them, try doing so while being mindful of the key concepts behind the traditional Zen aesthetic.

      
Above. Does it get more "Zen" than this? "Visual-Zen Master," Steve Jobs, allows the screen to fade completely empty at appropriate, short moments while he tells his story. In a great jazz performance much of the real power of the music comes from the spaces in between the notes. The silence gives more substance and meaning to the notes. A blank screen from time to time also makes images stronger when they do appear.

Also, it takes a confident person to design for the placement of empty slides. This is truly "going naked" visually. For most presenters a crowded slide is a crutch, or at least a security blanket. The thought of allowing the screen to become completely empty is scary. Now all eyes are on you.

      

Above. Gates here explaining the Live strategy. A lot of images and a lot of text. Usually Mr. Gates' slides have titles rather than more effective short declarative statements (this slide has neither). Good graphic design guides the viewer and has a clear hierarchy or order so that she knows where to look first, second, and so on. What is the communication priority of this visual? It must be the circle of clip art, but that does not help me much.

Dr. Kawana says that "to reach the essence of things, all non-essential elements must be eliminated." So what is the essence of the point being made with the help of this visual? Are any elements in this slide non-essential? At its core, what is the real point? These are always good questions to ask ourselves, too, when critiquing our own slides.

      
Above. Here Jobs is talking to developers at the WWDC'05 about the transition from the Power PC RISC chips to Intel. Sounds daunting, but as he said (and shows above) Apple has made daunting major shifts successfully before. (He also said sheepishly earlier in the the presentation, that every version of OSX secretly had an Intel version too...so this is not a new thing. The crowd laughed.).

A note on having an "open style"
One thing that would help Mr. Gates is an executive presentations coach and a video camera. One unfortunate habit he has is constantly bringing his finger tips together high across his chest while speaking. Often this leads to his hands being locked together somewhere across his chest. This gesture makes him seem uncomfortable and is a gesture reminiscent of The Simpsons' Mr. Burns. By contrast, Steve Jobs has a more open style and at least seems comfortable and natural with his gestures.    

      
Above. Mr. Gates needs to read Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points, ironically published by Microsoft Press. Atkinson says that "...bullet points create obstacles between presenters and audiences." He correctly claims that bullets tend to make our presentations formal and stiff, serve to "dumb down" our points, and lead to audiences being confused...and bored. Rather than running through points on a slide, Atkinson recommends presenters embrace the art of storytelling, and that visuals (slides) be used smoothly and simply to enhance the speaker's points as he tells his story. This can be done even in technical presentations, and it can certainly be done in high-tech business presentations.

The "Microsoft Method" of presentation?
The approach we've seen in Microsoft's last public presentation we can label the "Microsoft Method." This method is not different than the norm, in fact it is a perfect example of what Seth Godin and others call "Really Bad PowerPoint." Here's the rub: A great many professionals see the absurdity of this approach, even a great many professionals on the campus of Microsoft in Redmond. But change will continue to be slow, especially when the executives of the company which produces the most popular slideware program in the world use the program in the most uninspiring, albeit typical way.
   
       
Above. Chief technology Officer, Ray Ozzie follows the "Microsoft Method" too. (Left) Bullet No.3: "...interfaces through...interfaces"? (Right) Fundamental presentation rule: Do not stick your hands in your pockets. Informality is fine, but this is inappropriate even in the USA (and especially in cultures outside the U.S.). 

Refrain: It all matters!
We've talked about many presentation methods here at Presentation Zen, methods that are different than the "normal" or the "expected" but also simple, clear, and effective. Who wants to be "average," "typical," or "normal"? Ridderstrale & Nordstorm say it best in Funky Business: "Normality is the route to nowhere." I'm not suggesting you "present different" for the sake of being different. I am saying that if you move far beyond what is typical and normal in the context of presentation design, you will be more effective and different and memorable. Maybe Microsoft can afford lousy PowerPoint presentations, but you and I can't. For "the rest of us," it all matters.

Can we learn from a Japanese garden?
Looking for inspiration in different places? Find a book on Japanese gardens (like this one from my friend, designer Markuz Wernli Saito) or visit one in your area (if you are lucky enough to have one). You can learn a bit here about the Zen aesthetic and Japanese gardens in this article by Dr. Kawana. Living here in Japan I have many chances to experience the Zen aesthetic, either while visiting a garden, practicing zazen in a Kyoto temple, or even while having a traditional Japanese meal out with friends. I am convinced that a visual approach which embraces the aesthetic concepts of simplicity and the removal of the nonessential can have practical applications in our professional lives and can lead ultimately to more enlightened design.

Bill Gates and visual complexity

"It was one of the most poorly executed events I've seen Microsoft do in years." These were the words industry analyst , Rob Enderle, used to describe Tuesday's presentation by Microsoft executives, including Bill Gates, in an interview with PC World.

According to the PC World article, and various other media reports, the presentation for unveiling Microsoft's new Live Software strategy to the media, held in San Francisco, was one filled with logistical and technical errors, seemed "hurried" to some and ran long over the scheduled time. "It was Ray Ozziea's (CTO) coming out party and it wasn't a good one," Enderle said.

One of the goals of the presentation was to share the company's vision. But early media reports coming from the few people who attended the event have been less than glowing. Now, four days after the event, many in the media (and blogosphere) are still unclear just what exactly is "revolutionary" about Microsoft's new Live strategy and what it all means. If industry pundits don't fully get it, what hope do mere customers and investors have?

But my aim is not to discuss Microsoft's strategy but to focus on this particular presentation.

Rule No. 1: Know your message inside out (and backwards)
Leaders use speaking opportunities to communicate their vision in a crystal clear fashion (otherwise, what's the point of getting on stage?). It appears this recent presentation by Bill Gates, in the end, left things quite unclear, at least in the minds of many who attended the event.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs
I am not attempting to be glib or sarcastic (really), but perhaps Bill Gates and company should look to Steve Jobs and Apple for more than just technical inspiration. Bill could learn a lot about "presenting different" from observing Jobs' artful presentations. Sure, not everyone will agree with Jobs' observations, conclusions, and projections after his presentations, but at least people are not left scratching their heads in befuddlement. Jobs' presentations generate a lot of positive buzz and always release yet another wave of viral communication about the presentation's content. This happens in part because the contents are easily grasped and remembered by both the media, and regular customers and fans. You can't "spread the word" if you don't get what the word was. With Jobs' public presentations there is both a verbal and visual clarity. This is what great leaders do. Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, authors of Creating Customer Evangelists make a good observation about Jobs:

"Jobs does just what a leader is supposed to do: Provide a vision of where the company ship is headed and make sure everyone understands it."

Bill Gates is a very smart man. He can surely do better than his last presentation.

Rule No. 2: Remove barriers to effective communication
Aside from appearing not to have a clear message (or at least being guilty of trying to cram too much into a two-hour presentation), it looks like Gates and his staff did what many millions of other PowerPoint users do daily — they used PowerPoint in a way that did not help their message. In fact, their PowerPoint visuals probably hurt their message. If the visuals did not help, then they quite possibly got in the way of Gates making a meaningful, personal connection with the ninety or so people in the room.

To be fair, I was not at the presentation, so it is possible that the presenters did an amazing, inspiring job in spite of their bulletpoints an clip art. But judging from the many previous executive presentations currently available on the Microsoft website, along with the early media reports by those in attendance, it is doubtful.

Design matters, visuals matter...it ALL matters!
Here's the deal: It all matters. If you are going to get up in front of a lot of people and say that the design of your strategy matters, that the design of your integrated software matters, then at the very least the visuals you use — right here and right now, at this moment in time with this particular audience — also need to be the result of incredible design, not hurried decoration.

Let's examine a few of the slides used by Gates in the "Live" presentation Tuesday. To see even more slides, take a look at the many photos on Niall Kennedy's flickr site (brace yourself Beyond Bullet Points fans:

    
Bill Gates explains the big picture (but can he explain that picture behind him?).

    
"...this slide really pulls it all together" Bill Gates said of the slide above. You decide. You can see Bill Gates spend 60 seconds explaining this slide on "The Microsoft Platform" as well as observe him go through each bullet point on his other wordy slides on the cnet.com website.

To get a non-biased point of view on the visuals, I asked my friend, Atsuko Ito, a graphic designer who works with some of the worlds top global brands in Japan to comment on these slides. Here's what she said.

"Wow, where to begin? Generally, and from a pure visual point of view, in both of these slides (above) there is (1) too much information in one slide. This is typical in Japan too. But people can't read and listen at the same time, so that is a problem. (2) The Clipart looks cheap. Soulless. (3) The choice of colors are not the best. I’m personally not comfortable with it. Maybe because the colors don’t represent lifestyle or work style so well. It looks very cold. It makes life and work seem so depressing...

How about the slide with the clouds?

"For the 'The Live Era' slide, (1) communication priority is weak. Not sure what he wants to communicate the most. (2) Gradation is overused. Even the text has gradation! Especially when used on text, it makes it hard to read. (3) Overall impression is "clutter." One possible reason is using an image on the background. It is OK to use an image (in this case the cloud image), as long as the images that go on top of it are kept simple. In this case, they aren’t. Actually, the whole Gestalt is bad. It is a little ugly and confusing. Sorry."

There are many more visual problems with the slides as well, problems we have discussed on the site before. Let me just touch on just one more.

Don't rain on my parade 
Concerning the "Microsoft 'Live' Platform" slide, it is important to note that not all people will view the use of clouds in a positive light. Just think of the many ways we use "cloud(y)" to convey negative images or feelings in the English vernacular. For example, "Never a cloudy day" is used in many songs to convey love, good times, a bright future and so on. The phrase "...clouds up ahead" implies danger or difficulties in future.

Now it is true that a few fluffy cumulus clouds can represent a fine sunny day and convey other positive associations. But the slide Bill uses has enough cloud formations to make an experienced sailor give the order to batten down the hatches. Bill has some real cumulonimbus-looking clouds underneath his title, a sure sign that bad weather is ahead? There is even "digital rain" being released from one low cloud, showering "experiences" down (and up according to the double arrow) onto other software and "other devices," like an ancient iMac.

It may seem like a small thing, but you have to be careful with the implied messages sometimes hidden within images. This is especially true across cultures.

Slides matter, because it all matters. Well-designed visuals won't save a weak message, but poorly designed visuals will necessarily detract from — or even completely undermine — an otherwise strong verbal message.

Others comment on Gate's presentation
Former Apple employee, Mike Evangelist: Presentation skills 101.
CyberPsych: How to present Microsoft-style: Steve Jobs, you've got nothing to worry about.

Read comments on the "Live" photos on Niall Kennedy's Flickr site, the source for these event photos.

Watch Bill
Gates announces Windows Live, Office Live (Cnet.com).
Various Bill Gates presentations on the Microsoft website. 

Watch Steve
Various Steve Jobs presentations on the Apple site

The "Lessig Method" of presentation

The "Lessig Method" of presentation is not an official method per se, but many people who know about the work of Stanford law professor, Lawrence Lessig, have been inspired by his presentation style and informally refer to his approach as something unique indeed.

Those who have seen Lessig present have been talking about his approach for a while. David Hornik at VentureBlog wrote a post entitled Putting the "Power" in Powerpoint over two years ago. In this post he heaps praise on the presentation style of Lessig. Hornik says Lessig's presentations "are a fantastic combination of content, art and brand...."

James MacLennan may have been the first to put a label on Lessig's presentation style, calling it the "Lessig Method" which he likens to the Takahashi Method in Japan because Lessig's slides often contain just a single word, short quote, or a photo. The Takahashi Method and Professor Lessig's approach do have similarities, though Lessig uses photos and other graphics, albeit sparingly. MacLennan does a good job of reviewing recent posts in the blogosphere concerning presentations and slideware.

Here is a good example of the "Lessig Method" of presentation. You can see the 243 slides and hear his narration along with them in Flash. Unfortunately you can not see the presenter himself at the same time. Still, judging from the live recording of the presentation, we can get a pretty good idea of the smooth way Lessig synchronized his visuals with his speaking, i.e., the story he was telling about his ideas on "free culture." You can even download the PowerPoint file (sans the Mickey video) on this resource page.

See Dick present "Lessig Style"
There are more videos of Lessig lecturing and presenting here. But there is even a better example available. Scott, a Presentation Zen reader, sent me a note on Monday pointing out the unique presentation style of Dick Hardt. Hardt gives credit to Lessig for inspiring the unique method he used in his presentation on Identity 2.0.

Hardt speaks for 15 minutes and synchronizes his talk quite smoothly to what must be several hundred slides. Most slides are no more than a word or two, a short quote, or a photo. Most slides are visible no more than a few seconds.

Hardt's presentation style is not applicable to every case, of course. Often we need to go much more slowly. But for this short kind of presentation, content, and audience, it worked well. For longer presentations it would be more appropriate to change pace — sometimes moving quickly, slowing way down at other times to explain a confusing point, for example. His introduction is excellent though and is a style many people may want to experiment with to grab the attention of the audience and make an impression, and then later slowing down a bit when needed as the presentation progresses. Also, I would like to see Hardt use a remote and move away from his PowerBook.

It's not the size of your deck that counts
I guarantee you there is no presentation book on the market that would recommend you use a few hundred slides, some visible for 1-2 seconds, for a 15-minute presentation. That's crazy talk, right? Yet, it works in this particular case for this particular audience and for the particular allotted time, a short 15-minutes. This is why I never recommend a specific number of slides, or even that a presenter must use slideware at all. It depends.

As we like to say in Japan, it all depends on TPO (Time, Place, Occasion). Who's to say what an appropriate number of slides should be? It depends on the content and the presenter as well. Guy Kawasaki is amazing with 10 slides in his PowerPoint deck at his popular speaking appearances. Tom Peters may wow a crowd with his content and enthusiasm with a deck of 100 PowerPoint slides (I don't suggest you copy Tom's PPT design style, by the way...more on that at another time). The number is not important. To be concerned with the number of slides shows that our head is in the wrong place. Because...it is the wrong question to ask.

      
     LEFT: Complete deck from Kawasaki's presentation. RIGHT: Partial deck from Peter's PPT.

Exercise
Watch Hardt's 15-minute presentation and Lessig's Flash presentation. Ask yourself how you can incorporate aspects of the "Lessig Method" that will help kick the quality of your presentations up a notch. How can you use these simple visual techniques in slides and yet still keep your message conversational and your connection with the audience strong?

FEMA chart becomes brunt of joke.

All too often, I find myself confused by a chart someone is using in their presentation. This is ironic since the whole point of going to the trouble of making a chart or a diagram and using it in a presentation is to help facilitate understanding, not create confusion. As Edward Tufte, world-famous PowerPoint critic and mocker of PowerPoint "chart junk" says, at the very least it (PowerPoint) should do no harm. Graphics when done well can help. When done poorly they undermine our messages. Poor design can even become the object of a joke as well.

Case in point
Last week, on Comedy Central's Daily show, "news anchor" Jon Stewart ran a short piece on an odd chart which appears on the FEMA website. A chart which illustrates FEMA's involvement in what the agency calls "the life cycle of disasters." Commenting on FEMA's controversial response to Katrina, host Jon Stewart said, "What should FEMA have done? Perhaps the answer can be found on their website...." Stewart continues:

"This chart (below), clearly depicting the agencies responsibilities in the event of a disaster....It begins with a response to a disaster, leads to recovery, mitigation, risk reduction, prevention, preparedness...(dramatic pause) and ends up BACK IN DISASTER!"

"In truth, FEMA did exactly what they said they were going to do."     —  Jon Stewart                              

                        
See the video clip here (go to the 4:00 minute mark if you do not want to see the entire "news" segment.)
               
This chart could give the impression that FEMA's response to a disaster...ends up in disaster. Not what they had in mind when they slapped the graphic together, to be sure. FEMA is an important agency which does very important work. The agency deserves a better "What we do" graphic, and a better overall website for that matter.

The aesthetics
The chart has obvious design problems. The text labels inside the arrows are difficult to read. For example, two of the five text labels are set almost vertically (RESPONSE, PREVENTION) and the other (PREPAREDNESS), is set almost completely upside down. All upper case type does not help things either.

This graphic looks like something an employee who's in a hurry or inexperienced (or both) would spit out in PowerPoint or Word, print, and then tape inside the front window of the neighborhood liquor store announcing 50% off cases of Budweiser. The arrows and the star (simulating disaster) would appear to be run-of-the-mill "Auto Shapes" included in Microsoft Office software.

Ugliness aside
The graphic is ugly, yes. But that is not the real problem with it. The website says that the process begins when "...managers prepare for emergencies and disasters." So the cycle begins with "Preparedness." However, the graphic implies, judging from the "Disaster" starburst auto shape in the center, that the process begins with a disaster and a reaction to that disaster, and then prevention and preparedness sometime later...after the disaster.

Is describing what FEMA does really best understood in terms of a cycle, especially a life cycle? When I think of an example of a life cycle I think back to elementary school when I learned about the life cycle of the butterfly. Even a child understands this simple idea with the help of a basic chart: An adult butterfly lays an egg; egg hatches into a caterpillar; the caterpillar forms the chrysalis or pupa ("that sack thingy"); and this then turns into a butterfly. These are stages and we can easily draw a diagram of this kind of perpetuating cycle. Some 30 years later I still remember that chart.

Perhaps FEMA would have been better advised to show the stages in a more linear way? Marketing folks, for example, like to show the New Product Adoption Life Cycle in a more "linear" manner, revealing stages of adoption over time in the form of a bell shaped curve moving left to right (see example chart from crossing the Chasm here). I do not have examples of a more appropriate chart, but no doubt there are far better ways to show the various stages of the work FEMA does rather than a confusing "life cycle" that "begins in disaster and ends in disaster."

Even with help of live narration, this graphic would not do the best job possible of supporting the speaker trying to convey the message (from the FEMA website): "And at every stage of this cycle you see FEMA...." As a slide it would be inappropriate, no doubt. As a graphic on a website it sends an unintended (or at least confusing) message with no one there to clarify.

Exercise:
If you are (were) teaching a graphic design class, it would be quite interesting to assign students the task of creating a graphic that best helps people understand the role of FEMA. No doubt you would get many interpretations. As an experiment, (you could) tell half the students that the graphic should represent "the stages of FEMA involvement in a disaster" and tell the other half of the students to show "FEMA's involvement in the disaster life cycle." I wonder if thinking in terms of "stages" or "a process" (rather than "life cycle") would lead to better designs?

The "Godin Method" of presentation design

I have seen a lot of marketing professionals over the years give some pretty awful presentations. But Seth Godin appears to be one marketing "guru" who has given serious thought to how to design appropriate messages and accompanying visuals. Seth gets it. Can we call seth's presentation approach the "Godin Method"? (See the "Kawasaki Method" and "Takahashi Method".)

In an interview with Cliff Atkinson, Seth shares some of his views on presentations/PowerPoint:

"As a public speaker, I see far more than my fair share of presentations. Worse, a lot of them are from people getting paid to give them - and they're horrible. Horribly produced, horribly ineffective."

Many professionals who give presentations are not actually selling a product, so does all this selling and pitching stuff really apply, say, to academics, researchers, or to the guys down the hall in the accounting department? This was a question asked in the Atkinson interview. Seth comments:

"It seems to me that if you're not wasting your time and mine, you're here to get me to change my mind, to do something different. And that, my friend, is selling. If you're not trying to persuade, why are you here?"

A good question. A question I ask myself many times while watching (enduring?) highly paid senior managers and executives present information...one slide after another (...and another).

Seth wrote an ebook not too long ago that was a #1 bestseller on Amazon for about a year. I think the price was about two bucks for the downloadable PDF file. The money went to charity. The short book is well worth two bucks, but now you can get it for free if you agree to buy Free Prize Inside (it's on the honor system). The digital version is not copy protected so you are allowed to share the file with others in hardcopy or digital form. Spread the word.

I found slides demonstrating the "Godin Method" of presentation from the Ideavirus page on sethgodin.com. These particular slides (random sample thumbs below) are now over five years old. Back in the summer of 2000 there were probably not too many people with visuals like these...or today for that matter. Take a look at the slides. They are not for everyone, of course, but just click through the deck of 60 slides with an open mind. Perhaps you'll get some ideas for the design of your presentation visuals for a future talk. What aspects do you like? What design details would you change to fit your situation?

Sample thumbs from the July, 2000 presentation by Seth Godin:

     

     

     

          

Train to Osaka: Finding inspiration in Japanese print ads

Like most people in Japan, I spend a lot of time riding trains. Trains here are clean, comfortable, and on time. The trains are also full of print advertising hanging and fixed to every conceivable space. This is not bad, however, as the print ads allow passengers something to read if they should tire of their magazines, books, or the audio files on their iPods. I enjoy scanning the print ads while I commute as this allows me the chance to keep abreast of new products and events, and also to study graphic design trends and observe the way graphics and print are used in the media.

For the most part, Japanese poster design — although usually very creative — is anything but simple or "zen." Busy, colorful, noisy, and intense seems to be the order of the day (these words also describe my first Japanese boss, but that's another story). So last year when I noticed the JT (Japan Tobacco) "Smokers' Style" campaign I was immediately impressed, delighted, and amused by the way the agency designed the JT posters. Depending where you are in the world, these green and white posters may not seem so special, but for me, given the clutter found in most posters and print ads, these poster where like a breath of fresh air (quite ironic given the nature of the campaign, I realize).

There are actually several different campaigns by JT. But two in particular stand out. One is called "The kind manners of Mr. Inhale" (called "Su-san" in Japanese). The "Mr. Inhale" campaign posters may be creative, cheeky, and colorful, but they also have less visual impact when compared to the clean simplicity of the posters from the "Smoking manners awareness" campaign ("Anata ga kitsugeba mana- ha kawaru" in Japanese).

     

Notice the difference in terms of impact and clarity between the two posters above. The one on the left is from the "Su-san" set. The poster on the right is from the "Smoking manners awareness" set.

I asked a local Japanese graphic designer I know, who works here with some of the largest firms in the world, what she thought about the JT posters from the stand point of effective visual communication. I asked her to compare the posters from the two different campaigns above. She much preferred the "Manners" posters for their clean, simple messaging. Here's what she said:

"It seems like they use different taste/artist for each campaign. The "Manners" campaign posters are indeed much simpler. It is one-color printing with green, the most eco-friendly color. The two simple colors, white and green, are a good choice for these messages. The "Manners" ads use a pictograph-like illustration. Pictograph is the ultimate form of universal design, and it is simple enough for anyone to understand: old or young, Japanese or non-Japanese. Also, there is so much clutter and noise in most print advertising that this very simple design actually stands out more. People see this on the street or in the train where it is filled with clutter. Also, it is a bit comic-like, so people like Japanese who grew up with comics are naturally drawn to it."

What struck me when I first saw the posters is how much they reminded me of the slides used in a PowerPoint presentation I once saw on the issue of environmental resource planning. The use of white space, simple colors, minimal use of text, and the consistent use of unique pictographs to illustrate systems, processes, and events really made for good visual support of a content-rich presentation to an international crowd. With some additional editing, I could imagine using visuals like these below for a presentation.

   

       

EXERCISE: Take a look at the two sets of posters here and here. If they were PowerPoint visuals, how do they compare for simplicity, clarity, beauty, grace, impact, and overall visual support? Are there any principles or techniques in these examples that you can adapt to your presentation design project?  Perhaps a future project?

FYI
Here you can see links to the campaign's TV ads, links to all the posters used in the campaign, and a smoking manners screen saver (so if you want to give subtle hints to your coworker, this screen saver might do it). There is even a "manner poster maker" which allows you to type in your own text.

Download the "Manners Screen saver" here. The screen saver will circulate through several different posters. I guarantee no one else in your office will have this screen saver. Voice your smoking-etiquette evangelism! You can download the "Su-san" ("Mr. Inhale") screensaver too here.

See how manners are changing in Japan. Simple pie charts along with the graphical and written representation of the behavior in question.

See TV commercial promoting "smoking manners awareness" in QuickTime or RealPlayer.