[Sigia-l] Smackdown: Edward Tufte vs. Don Norman

[Jeffrey Fisher]

sorry for jumping into the middle of this, but . . .

isn't part of the problem that powerpoint has constrained thinking to the point where people generally use it in a quite specific way? laurie's point is not the bullet so much as it's about the chunking of information in general (and bullets are one way of doing that). what do you do if your chunk is bigger than a slide? but powerpoint seems to have structurally encouraged precisely this sort of "chunks no bigger than a slide" approach, and indeed it has to, except where video files might be involved . . . but if you want to show a video file, why not just use a video application?

i thought your analogies to a hammer/flyswatter and demosthenes were interesting in part because you acknowledge that it takes a lot of work to bust out of the bulletpoint-thinking encouraged not just by ppt itself, but by the culture that's grown up alongside it (whatever the causal relationships, which are certainly not one-way).

in any case, isn't the bottom line issue our having to adjust to technology, rather than technology enabling us to do things we want to do, or that we would want to do if we only knew we could? as it is, i think ppt -- as a technology, but of course "technology" is culturally determined -- encourages bad thinking, but it's easy and it reinforces precisely the bad thinking corporate culture likes, and so corporate culture insists on it.

and i would say that karl's anecdote supports this view.

fwiw


-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Reiss <elr at e-reiss.com>
Sent: May 27, 2005 10:43 AM
To: LGray at KnowledgeStorm.com, elr at e-reiss.com, Sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Smackdown: Edward Tufte vs. Don Norman

Laurie wrote:
I think that PowerPoint has done more to fracture communication in
the world of business than just about anything else � IM included.

To wit: working for clients in which *everything* must be placed into
a.ppt. Any content had to fit into the context of that slide. Any
description, rationale, ...anything... had to be explained in the
context of bullet points. 

And I write:
Laurie has hit the nail on the head � businesses that encourage (or
even demand) the misuse of bullets are the real problem, not the
program.

If a company insists on using a hammer as a flyswatter, they�re going
to end up with a lot of broken windows and holes in the walls. I find
both hammers and flyswatters useful � but for different things.

Until last year, our company never had a presentation PowerPoint. But
many places (particularly in the U.S.), meeting up without a
PowerPoint was like showing up without shoes. It just wasn�t done. So
despite my objections, our corporate wardrobe now includes both shoes
and PPT � but with virtually no bullets.

Try eliminating bullets when you write a presentation; it reminds me
of Demosthenes learning to speak with stones in his mouth. And the
end result is almost always far better for the effort. 

Next week, there�s a PowerPoint-free conference in Copenhagen. So how
can I show the crowd a good photo to back up a point I�d like to
make? I haven�t figured that one out yet. Although I applaud the
initiative, I think the baby got thrown out with the bathwater.

Lesson? Use the right tool for a particular job. Sometimes that means
bullets. Sometimes it doesn�t. PowerPoint works both ways and is a
lot easier to coordinate than an overhead projector, Kodak Carrousel
or posterboards. 

Cheers,
Eric

e-reiss & associates
copenhagen, denmark
www.e-reiss.com

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