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 »