Digital Media

Tough on Tufte

Generally, I would say that I am a fan of the use of Power Point in presentations. I find them to be helpful in summarizing the important points of a lecture. It is particularly helpful when presenters begin to digress and you start to wonder where they are going. A look at the bullet points on the screen could help clarify some confusion. Yet, sometimes these presentations can hinder the presentation, causing even more confusion.
Tufte brought up many good points in opposition of the PP Presentation. He mentions that many PP presentations are entirely presenter oriented, and not content oriented or audience oriented. This is a good reminder for teachers/presenters to step back and look at the correlation between the slides and the content. Tufte suggests that anything wordy or consisting of a lot of information should be printed and distributed on paper handouts. I agree although I don’t find the paper PP slide print out with lines on the sides for notes to be of great help. The concept is great but the slides are way too small on the page and give the viewer too many things to look at. I get lost trying to correlate the right slide on the screen with the hand out and the confusion distracts me from listening. I find that the use of lines are distracting, too. Since the information in PP is given in bullets, the section for notes should be in bullet points as well. Maybe even bullet points as sub bullets for the bullet points. This is a subjective evaluation but pertinent in the dissecting of informational design!
Tufte also points out many grammatical and compositional points in his article. I became much more aware of the usage of passive voice, font size, bad use of pronouns, and even resolution. I am sure as students we all agree that these are very distracting. It was interesting to see how we each pulled apart distracting features of the PP presentations in class. I was amazed at how well the principle’s PP was rearranged. The altered slide really took into account the audience with the friendly use of clip art and text.
Tufte kept me in agreement about the downfalls of PP until he brought up the idea that the software companies creating PP are far removed from the people using the presentation tool. He describes the software companies as being structured, sequential, and vested unlike the marketing folks who are more interested in advocacy over analysis, slogans + branding, and market place ethics. I believe he is reaching at this point. Power Point can be used properly and used poorly but I believe it has to do with each presenter being able to communicate clearly, regardless of his or her profession.

These readings and lessons show us that we have to take a lot into consideration when creating informational design. It also presents even more questions. Are there specific structures we need to follow? Do art instructors view informational design differently?

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment