bad powerpoint presentations

bad powerpoint presentations

The Impact of Bad PowerPoint Presentations on Audience Engagement and Communication Effectiveness

1. Introduction to PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint has become the standard visual aid tool for use in a presentation of any sort. From business to education to public speaking, PowerPoint has become an essential tool of communication. The software has become known for its ideal outline of presentational ideas. An engaging PowerPoint has the capacity to draw in the audience, as well as deliver information. The software provides many great benefits, but with these benefits come great costs. Bad PowerPoint has the ability to decrease the engagement from the audience and effectively ruin the overall communication intended by the presenter. It is important to realize that while PowerPoint has its many pros and cons, detracting from the potential of bad PowerPoint is far from worth it.

Today, responsible for PowerPoint, use is up to an average of 30 million presentations daily by one measure. However, some research has shown that poorly designed presentations are more than costly in terms of audience engagement; they are also diminished in the effectiveness of the message that is disseminated. The number of tools and support exists for good PowerPoint presentations, and there are various tools available to prevent bad PowerPoint. A well-designed presentation can keep the audience engaged and allow for the most important aspects of the message to be retained by the audience. However, without visual cues, audiences on average typically remember ten percent of a presentation. With visual cues, the audience retention grows to 35%. As a result, presentations must be purposefully designed and should not allow for textual transcriptions.

2. Common Mistakes in PowerPoint Design and Delivery

Even though PowerPoint has been a part of the average professional’s daily routine, with most of us preparing and delivering presentations, this is not always done effectively. Some of the most common mistakes observed in PowerPoint presentations may include poorly designed slides that are often cluttered with excessive data and text. The color and type combination is not very clear, and slides are frequently crowded with text and graphic elements. A presentation may fail to be visually appealing if prepared by more than one person due to differences in design styles. There is also an overabundant use of bullet points, leading to a presentation format where the information is kind of lined up on the slides, which can cover the speaker like a sort of malicious screen – a veritable text layer on the entire talk.

A good presentation is when the presenter, the receiver, the message, and the areas of influence are aligned. The objectives of the presentation are defined as audience understanding and engagement. Hence, a bad PowerPoint presentation can damage communication between both parties. An audience who is bored or at least not impressed by the impact of the presentation will change their focus to something else, such as checking emails, playing on Facebook, etc. This has well-known undesired effects on the effectiveness and efficiency of the communication. The audience may even lose interest in the message before the presentation begins and certainly will not understand the message because they are distracted by the poor visual message. Such topics will be covered in the next section.

3. Effects of Bad PowerPoint Presentations on Audience Engagement

Using surveys, A/B tests, and focus groups, PowerPoint experts have found that bad presentations have a relatively distinct effect on the critical business measure of audience engagement. Bad slides can confuse people with too much information, too little context, and unclear visual hierarchies. The “fewer, clearer words and pictures” that evoke the “stickiness” of great stories and make data’s emotion and impact resonate can strengthen how the audience receives information, with real impact on persuasion and retention.

Bad slides are a top factor that prevents people from paying attention to the presentation in the first place and launching them into a deeper level of processing and thinking. This affects both comprehension of the message and audience recall. Cognitive scientists have discovered that presentation audiences actually “push away” content that is hard to comprehend. If people do manage to sit through non-aesthetic designs, they may not learn anything, or at least not anything useful. When a slide has too much information, people struggle to process it and are more likely to forget the slide, as well as the rest of the presentation. While they may appear to recall the information, it is not being used in the same way and is more likely to be forgotten. Additionally, the delivery of the information declines, with the presenter not giving as good of an impression, emanating negativity. A continued focus on long text, complex data tables, and overly complex visuals will fail to educate or inspire viewers.

4. Strategies for Creating Engaging and Effective PowerPoint Presentations

Storytelling can be a crucial part of a persuasive talk. Presentations are effective when designed in a logical, cogent, and interlinked manner. Impactful use of commonly-accepted presentation skills can also contribute to audience engagement, and good slide design is associated with higher levels of audience attention and message retention. Always good to remember audiences are engaged by discussions. Effective PowerPoints can provide focused visual interpretations, meaning, and context to what is being said. They should not simply serve as visual prompts for speakers. It is better to use images where possible, not bullet points. PowerPoint presentations are best viewed when they provide a brief introduction into the various topics the speaker is about to explore in more detail in spoken form.

Organization is important. Use a taster to what is about to be presented in a talk, in order to act as an indicator to the audience. The most popular masterpiece scientific papers have an established structure that writers and readers know and understand. Story is an engaging and effective way to share big ideas and help connect with an audience. Color, images, and design play a strong role in helping an audience understand the slide content and can raise attention and retention. Large font on slides can make the talk/slides more accessible to a wider audience. Summarization in the final slide helps to signal the presentation is finished and helps people to remember what was covered. Engage your audience through questions. The most successful talks engage audiences by asking questions (where possible). Reacting to audience responses can involve the audience in more ways. Social inclusion and a sense of being involved in the research is important. Pester power. Talk about your research with friends and family – make them tell you when you’re too technical!

5. Conclusion and Recommendations for Improving PowerPoint Presentations

To conclude, the general conclusion from the sample studies is that approximately 20% of PowerPoint slides are considered bad. Bad slides detract significantly from perceived audience engagement and do little to enhance effective communication. Because audiences have come to expect PowerPoint-using presenters to visually enhance their talks with multimedia, presenters have to compete with the presenters that cater to this expectation. When presenters fail to do this, the availability of multimedia that audiences have become used to forces attention to the fact that something is “missing” from the slide or not being used to enhance the slide. Consequently, perceived audience engagement is lower in bad slide conditions.

In addition, much evidence suggests that good slides can capture attention but still depend on verbal explanations and can decrease cognitive overload. In comparison, bad slides are perceived as a distractor that causes increased cognitive effort.

It is recommended that presenters monitor the message that connection information conveys and engage audiences that have different computer-related experience in separate studies. Future PowerPoint-related classroom research should focus on whether students with high or low working memory ability benefit the most from good PowerPoint slide design. To most effectively engage audiences in oral presentations with PowerPoint, researchers need to conduct a great deal more research on other elements of PowerPoint design, such as using relevant and high-quality multimedia to supplement a written message, the use of color, font size and format, and animation to convey better understandability and improved presentable flow.