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

[Carl D. Antone]

The salient point that Don Norman makes is that it's not the tool, it's the
content. And furthermore, it's the presentation that makes or breaks the
case.

How much more distillation do you need?

<aside> I often give presentations using PDF presentations from slides I've
made in Illustrator or PS.

These give me all the flexibility I need to clearly elucidate concepts
without the burden of (1 a(n) ineffectual hierarchical, and (2 a visually
repelling presentation.

</aside>

Even with all the fancy graphics apps we have, presentation and
prepared-ness are WAY more significant in terms of information carrying
resources than the tool they were created in/with. (apologies for the
dangling preposition).

For exazmple, it's not that difficult to show a 600 DPI info graphic on a
high-res display EVEN DURING a PPT session.

Just more fuel for the fire,

-- ca








-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Andrew Boyd
Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 4:20 PM
To: Sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Smackdown: Edward Tufte vs. Don Norman

Karl Fast wrote:

>
>Shortly after starting a new job, I wrote a brief document, maybe
>ten pages, outlining the project that I had been hired to run.
>
>The CEO returned it to me saying, "I want this in Powerpoint. Until
>you have distilled this down to a series of bullet points, you
>obviously haven't thought the project through carefully enough and
>found a way of explaining it to other people."
>
>
>True story.
>
>
Karl: I've had this happen in two different Australian government
departments... it was phrased more along the lines of "We need to
present this to the management team. Write a proposal, give it a good
executive summary, and then put it into a 10 minute PowerPoint slideshow
so that we can discuss it on Monday afternoon". We gave them what they
wanted.

Just on this thread generally - Stephen King wrote in 'On Writing':
"Write to your audience, everything else is bullsh*t". If the
organisation who are paying my fee want a PowerPoint slideshow, that is
what they get. If they want a design wireframe in Visio, that is what
they get. If they want a report written in Applix Words, that is what
they get. You may see a pattern emerging here :) Meet and exceed their
expectations, and they will love you, or at least, pay you :)

These tools and many others have obvious flaws - but if you have a
choice between convincing the client management to take on a new tool,
or take on the project that you were engaged for, I think that the
responsible choice is to convince them to take on the project. You can
perhaps convince them to change their tool choice later. Or not.

Cheers, Andrew

--
___________________________________________
Andrew Boyd	andrew at friendlymanual.com
http://www.friendlymanual.com
"Do not ask me why I follow my heart,
ask yourself why you do not follow yours."
___________________________________________

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