Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes - The Goodman ...

pg. 58
What makes a good story?
PROTAGONIST
STRUCTURE
INCITING
INCIDENT
PowerPoint Is Your Friend
Seriously. – cont’d
Use animation to control the flow
of information and convey meaning.
The version of PowerPoint that I use (PowerPoint 2004 for Mac) offers more than
50 ways to animate text. To the novice, this can seem like an embarrassment of riches,
but presentations that incorporate a rich variety of animation techniques are usually
just embarrassing. Words or images that fly onto the screen, stretch like rubber,
drop into place like a bouncing ball, or take some other fancy route to their ultimate
destination are almost always nothing more than eye candy that adds empty calories to
the viewer’s “meal.”
Which is not to say that all animations are pointless. Used thoughtfully, animated words
and images can help you dole out information to audience members in digestible pieces,
keep their attention focused where it belongs, and even add another layer of meaning to
each slide.
Animating bullets to control information flow
When a slide with multiple bullet points (such as the agenda slide for PCA on page 56)
appears on-screen, audience members will automatically read all the bullets, even while
the presenter is still talking about bullet #1. Human nature is at work once again, but it
creates problems in the transmission of information from presenter to audience. As the
audience members read ahead, they invariably tune out the spoken explanation of bullet
#1, so they may miss critical information right from the start. And once they know where
the presenter is headed in subsequent bullets, they may tune out the remaining comments
until the next slide appears – more valuable information lost.
Animation can help presenters avoid this problem. By bringing in each bullet point with
a simple effect (e.g., appear, fade in, peek in from left), the presenter places on the screen
only the information he or she wants the audience to see. Subsequent points remain
invisible until the spoken explanation is finished. Audience members can still find other
things to read if they have to, but at least you won’t be providing the distraction yourself.
RESOLUTION
GOAL
ACT I ACT II ACT III
FIGURE 14
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Animating graphic elements to deliver
complex information gradually
There may be occasions when you need to show a map,
chart, or other graphic that concentrates a large amount of
information on a single slide. Simply showing the complete
picture all at once can overwhelm the audience, and even if
you take the time to explain how all the pieces fit together,
you run the same risk as the presenter who displays all his
bullets at once. While you are here, the audience is there, and
your verbal explanation may be tuned out as viewers try to
make sense of the visual information on their own.
In my workshop “Storytelling as Best Practice,” I display
this slide (figure 14) to illustrate the basic structure that has
been used in stories from the earliest myths and fables to last