I have often heard presentation “experts” say something like, “studies have shown that presenters rate themselves as much more effective than their audiences do.”  Have you heard something like this before?  I have never seen the research that supports this, (which doesn’t mean it isn’t out there), but I recently ran into an interesting study that relates to this subject. Read the rest of this entry »

For many years I have heard about 7.  Perhaps you have too.  Mostly I have heard (and became interested) in 7 as it related to memory. Most of what I had heard however came through “training” resources that I have grown to be increasingly suspicious of.  Some time ago I set out to find out what was behind 7. Read the rest of this entry »

Reports of the death of Presentation Facts are only slightly exagerated. While not flat lined, we have certainly been in a coma for many months. 2008 was quite a year. The company I lead (Interactive Holdings, LLC) was in the middle of an acquisition in March when Bear Stearns went belly up and the banking world (and in many ways my life) was turned upside down. Thankfully, we were able to secure financing and complete the acquisition at the end of the year. We added a great presentation solutions company called Creative Visions to our portfolio on November 15, 2008.

Finding, and even conducting, solid research that adds to our understanding of what makes for effective presentations continues to be a great interest of mine. So what better day than January 1, 2009 to resolve to continue this work in the new year. My folder of research to review is full of interesting articles.  I also plan to contract with a North Carolina university to conduct some original research this year that follows up on Doug Vogel’s 1986 and 1996 work and is focused on understanding the effectiveness of the much maligned bullet slide compared with more grpahic or pictorial data presentations.

If any readers have suggestions for interesting research topics or run across well done research that would be of interest to others, please pass them along to me.

Happy New Year!

Our PPT Use Survey began by trying to determine what the average PPT presentation looked like. To do this we searched for publicly available PPT files on the Web. A total of 175 presentations were downloaded and analyzed. Based on this survey, the typical PPT presentation could be described as follows: Read the rest of this entry »

The clamour surrounding PowerPoint as a presentation tool appears to have died down a bit over the last few years. This is a welcome relief. The hype and fervour about the use of PPT that followed the publication of Professor Edward Tufte’s 2003 article entitled “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” did little to increase our understanding of how electronic visuals can enhance communication.

In December of 2005, Presentation Facts wanted to take a small step towards adding to our presentation knowledge base in some way. We had to keep our goals modest so we decided a good way to start would be to conduct a relatively simple survey of publicly available PowerPoint presentations. By analyzing average PPT presentations, we hoped to begin building a baseline of usage information that might suggest further areas of inquiry. In addition, perhaps comparisons could be drawn between how average users actually use PPT and proven principles of effective multimedia development. Read the rest of this entry »

It is hard to believe that it has been about two years since I made my last Presentation Facts post on the Visual Being Blog. Visual Being was started by my friend Lee Potts and was home to numerous contributors connected with Infocomm’s Presentations Council. While interest in Visual Being has unfortunately waned a bit over the years, my passion for seeking out presentation related research has not. Over the years, many VB readers have contacted me about my Presentation Facts posts, asking for more detail or copies of studies I commented on … leading me to believe there is a fair amount of interest in this topic out there.

A couple of my personal goals for 2008 are to renew my commitment to posting on the growing library of research I have been collecting, and to finish a presentation-related research project I started in January of 2006. Since I had purchased the Presentation Facts URL back in 2005, I decided to start a new blog dedicated to this subject rather than continue as a part of Visual Being. All the Presentation Facts posts from VB have been copied here. I wish all of my friends at VB the best of luck moving forward.

Here at Presentation Facts, I plan to continue posting on the presentation-related research I run across and maybe even conduct some small research projects of my own where possible.

I hope you will join me for a lively discussion and debate!

Doug Vogel’s 1986 study demonstrated a clear and significant effect on persuasion when a presentation is delivered along with supporting visuals. What is not clear from Vogel’s work is exactly how the improvement in persuasion happens. Persuasion is a complicated process involving attention… comprehension… yielding/agreement… and retention …. culminating in action. Vogel studied 17 modifiers of these components of persuasion trying to understand what was going on, but in the end his results were inconclusive and even contradictory.

Professor Richard Mayer has approached the challenge of understanding the use of visuals from a different perspective. Mayer has focused on the effect of visuals on learning. Just as Vogel developed a well researched theory of persuasion, Mayer has done extensive research on learning and developed a cognitive theory of multimedia learning. All of the research he presents in his excellent book “Multimedia Learning” is designed to test the assumptions of this theory. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the surprising revelations I have had while searching for Presentation Facts is that there is a lot more applicable research out there than I first thought. There is also research that is fundamental to the work Presentation Professionals do everyday. Perhaps the most foundational work can be found in the research and writings of Professor Richard Mayer. Read the rest of this entry »

Vogel’s study on the impact of presentation visuals on persuasion (1998) did not really provide conclusive evidence of the effectiveness of animations. Some improvements in comprehension and perception of the presenter were noted, but these did not translate into a significant improvement in persuasive effect. The quality of the graphics and the way animations were used in the study could have contributed to their lack lustre performance.

This article adds some interesting information from a 1991 study to our emerging understanding of animation effectiveness. Read the rest of this entry »

The argument for and against PowerPoint (mostly against) goes on. Many have picked up on thoughts expressed by Edward Tufte in his essay “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint”. Regardless of where you stand on the debate created by this essay, it is important to understand that Tufte’s essay is opinion… not science. There are no studies that show PowerPoint is “making us stupid”, or that we should not trust presenters who rely on it or that projected visuals should be thrown out in favor of handouts. It is also very popular these days to decry the widespread use of the ubiquitous Bullet Slide. Keep in mind that to date, Presentation Facts has found no empirical evidence that the much maligned Bullet Slide is significantly more or less effective than any other type of visual. (It may or may not be better, or worse than other visuals, we just haven’t reviewed studies yet that clearly answer this question).

We have however found clear evidence that what happens before… and after visuals are created can significantly impact the persuasive effect of a presentation. Read the rest of this entry »