Last week I shared my thoughts on Kashi’s confusing use of slides to present what was essentially a document. In retrospect, I might have been a bit incorrect using the term ‘slideument’ which more accurately applies to a set of slides that read like a document.
While the content in both of these presentations is valuable, presenting it in slide form does not make sense, since they were dense with text, did not use many visuals, and flowed much more like an essay.
On the other hand, Kashi’s Yearbook celebrating 25 years was designed as a document but presented as slides… docuslides?? With this practice becoming common with online services such as SlideRocket and Slideshare, maybe it’s time to coin a new term to use in conjunction with slideument.
Kashi designed a beautiful document, but confusingly presented it as a slideshow
I received a monthly e-mail newsletter from SlideRocket, an online presentation service. Featured under their Presentation Showcase was a SlideRocket presentation created by Kashi, the San Diego based whole foods company. I clicked on the link and was taken to a beautifully designed, visually appealing presentation… I mean document. No, they were definitely slides… but, they’re in portrait orientation… wait a minute!! (You can view the presentation here.)
I was greatly confused. I liked what I was seeing, but felt weird clicking through slides that looked like 8.5×11″ pages. I quickly realized that I was looking at the ultimate incarnation of what Presentation Zen‘s Garr Reynolds calls a “slideument.” As Garr explains,
“Slides are slides. Documents are documents. They aren’t the same thing. Attempts to merge them result in what I call the ‘slideument’ (slide + document = slideument).”
Slideuments are a symptom of ignorance and, to a degree, laziness. Conference organizers tend to require their speakers to submit their presentation slides to be used as handouts or to otherwise be distributed to attendees. More and more, college professors distribute their lecture slides to their students as a form of notes – all but obliterating the need for students to pay attention in class and take notes. This creates a design dilemma, because well designed slides do not function well as a document. What these organizers and professors don’t understand is that the purpose of slides is completely different from the purpose of a document. Paraphrasing from Edward Tufte, slides have a low density of information while documents have a high density of information. In other words, slides are a visual supplement to the main medium of information (the lecturer) while documents are the main medium of information. Instead of combining the two into a slideument, they should be creating two separate versions of the document – one for reading, the other for presenting.
Kashi’s Yearbook celebrating their “25 Years of Passion for Positive Eating” was an incredibly well designed document full of great information divided into 7 sections. It was information dense. Presenting it page by page in a slideshow, however, added no functionality. If anything, it lessened the effectiveness of the document by constraining the viewable size of the document and forcing the reader to move in a linear fashion. If the document had also been redesigned specifically to be presented as slides, it would have been much more effective.
In an upcoming post, I will present some solutions to the slideument conundrum. I will share examples of how to fill the needs of conference organizers and teachers by utilizing notes and/or creating two documents.
Update: After some more consideration, and comments from readers, I’ve written a follow up post clarifying the problems with this presentation and suggesting a new term for the Kashi dilemma – docuslides.
For thousands of years the human brain has developed to process the visual input received through the eyes from the surroundings. Survival depended on being able to see the mammoth from far off, spot the snake in the grass, or the color of fruit in a tree. Only recently in its evolution has the brain’s visual system spent so much time decoding letters, such as the ones that make up War & Peace. The cortex of the human brain has developed immensely to be able to read and ponder such literary works, not to mention complex scientific textbooks. And yet, even now, the brain still responds more actively to vibrant pictures.
Trade weapons for art. Replace your bullet points with high quality photographs. Bullet points are great for shopping lists and talking points, but not for getting your point across. They just don’t work, because text is boring and lists are distracting.
If each item truly is that important, create a separate slide with a high quality image that represents the idea. Or use an image to represent the overall idea of the list, and verbally give the key points of the idea.
Go ahead and bleed. Using a full screen image is much more effective than copying the thumbnail from a Google search. Instead, download the full resolution file and fill the screen with it.
Fill the screen with image for more impact
Don’t clip to save. This is one instance when cheaper isn’t better. Don’t use the built in clip-art for graphics. Dip into your classroom funds and purchase stock images for the really important lectures. Web sites like iStockPhoto sell high quality images for relatively low prices. Once you sign up as a member, you can access their Free Image of the Week. Collect these over the years and you’ll have a substantial library of great images that are bound to fit in to your lecture slides somewhere.
Purchase high quality stock images for important presentations
Join the commonwealth. Ok, so most classroom budgets won’t get you very far, but there are alternatives. You can access a wealth of images created by amateur and professional photographers who license their images for reuse – it’s called a Creative Commons license. I explained how to do this in a previous post.
But that’s not all! There are many organizations who provide many of their images for free. Just for starters, visit some of these sites:
DIY. If you’re still struggling to find the image that you want, get creative and Do It Yourself. Grab a digital camera (a 3-megapixel camera is commonplace today and is sufficient quality for a presentation) and make the image yourself. Take a moment to review some basic photography concepts, such as the Rule of Thirds and lighting, at a website like Digital Photography School and then go out and explore your inner Ansel Adams.
There is so much more that we could discuss in relation to the use of images in your lecture slides, but they can be addressed in future posts. For now, see how you can improve one of your lecture slide decks by using less text and more images.
Everyone has heard the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Turns out, it’s true. Written language has evolved over the years from cave drawings and paintings. Indeed, text is nothing more than a series of very simple pictures. For this reason, the brain takes considerably longer to decode strings of text (i.e. bulleted sentences) than it does single words or short statements. In other words, pictures are faster at conveying information than words – at least when we’re talking about concepts and ideas (detailed data is difficult to convey via words or pictures – which is why scientific papers turn to tables and charts).
Here are two steps you can take to use less text.
1. Whittle your titles. Take the time to reduce slide titles down to their core meaning. This will remove clutter and superfluous information that can confuse and distract your students. Use short, concise titles to get the main point across. Then fill in the gaps while lecturing. This allows the student to understand the context which aids in better retention of the details you provide.
Oftentimes, I find a lot of redundancy in slide titles throughout a lecture. For instance, “Using Peer Mentors to Drive Students Toward Deeper Learning and Productive Reflective Writing” could become “Peer Mentors Improve Learning.”
“What Do Professional Learning Communities Have to Do With Factoring A Trinomial?” could become “Math and Society” or “The Role of Math in Society.”
“A History of the Culture of Tea in Britain” might be simplified as “British Tea Culture.”
2. Remove bulleted text. Bullets on a slide often serve only as lecture notes to prompt the professor and are not necessary for the students. Sure, they need to know the information, but you’re going to explain the important concepts during the lecture. If you need those notes while you’re presenting, cut and paste them into the Presenter Notes in your slideware. You can then print off the slides as lecture notes or use Presenter Mode while in class. Remember, guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people.
Every year, each college at BYU selects an Honored Alumni to return and speak to current students and faculty. Last fall I was privileged to work with Dr. Steven Baugh in preparing his presentation as Honored Alumnus of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. Dr. Baugh is director of the CITES department of the McKay School of Education, and has taught math for a number of years. His interest with mathematics began with his father, who was also an accomplished mathematician and high school teacher.
Working with Dr. Baugh was easy from the beginning, not only for his humility and willingness to accept suggestions, but also for what he provided me with as an outline. Unlike most presenters, Steven had not not yet created a set of slides. Instead he had simply typed up an outline of the things he wished to discuss. This made it very easy for us brainstorm the most effective presentation and create slides that best illustrated his message.
I have included a selection of slides as well as an animated version for you to view below.
