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Interactivity: A Revolution Waiting
Steven C. Schatz
Indiana University
Interactivity puts in our hands a revolutionary tool. We can build more powerful presentations. We can communicate more effectively. Our audience will understand more and retain more. Our presentations can be customized as we speak to take the best advantage of the dynamics of audience, delivery and understanding. We, as presenters now have this power. However, most do not use it. To take advantage of interactivity, we must design and build our presentations differently. More importantly, we must think in a new way.
What is interactivity
When most people hear the word interactive, they think multimedia and the world wide web. It is much more simple than that. In the context of presentations, interaction means that by clicking on some object (often a button) we can go to another slide, but not necessarily the next slide in line. The fact that we do not have to proceed in a linear fashion is the road which makes all the difference.
What’s the Point
Presentations now tend to be linear. They start at an introduction and build like a story -- beginning, middle and end. Each slide follows the next from beginning to end. It’s like a scroll, a video tape, a movie. What’s the problem with that? I can think of two.
Problem One:
Implied Ranking The first problem is that delivering a presentation in a linear format forces some kind of ranking on the material. Just like a story or movie, the audience unconsciously believes that the facts at the beginning are foundation ideas and the parts toward the end are built from the foundation ideas. This is not necessarily the case. There are often several ideas of equal importance.
In addition, this “presentation as story” metaphor implies a problem or tension which builds toward a climax and resolution at the end of the presentation, like a film or story does. Forcing information into this format often compromises the information and requires inventing irrelevant connections to support the flow of the tale. Compromising information during the design process nearly insures poor communication. Particularly affected is audience retention. Remember, the only information the audience remembers from this type of presentation is the end result -- the moral. If we want the audience to retain information offered throughout the presentation, we must break ourselves of this story telling habit.
Problem Two:
Show All Slides The second problem holds (or withholds) the keys to the kingdom. In a linear presentation, we must present all the slides. If we take advantage of interactivity, we do not. We can build “just in case” slides for information we may not need or situations we may not face. A few examples should make this more clear.
Example One: You are selling condos. The land is on an old toxic waste dump. You have information which shows that the radiation levels will fall below lethal levels within the next 5 years. This is a good counter to the objection -- if it is raised. However, you may not wish to show the slide in the event no one mentions the locale. In a linear presentation, all the slides show from beginning to end. With interactivity, you can have buttons that are not obvious that can go to these answer slides, should the problem arise.
Example Two: You build a single presentation that will be shown to engineers, sales force and management. The basic information is the same. The engineers want supporting technical information. Management wants supporting financial information. Sales wants neither, but wants the information as fast as possible. By putting links to further information, you can build one presentation that gives as much or as little information as is requested depending on the group and the situation.
Taking Advantage of Interaction To make the best use of the power of interactivity, we must design and build our presentations differently. While design is an enormous area to consider, here are 5 points that will make your presentations much more powerful. They will be discussed in the next section.
Idea Clusters and Menu Slides
When thinking about your presentation, instead of trying to place ideas in order like a story, think of clusters of ideas. Usually, there will be a very few big ideas supported by a cluster of small ideas. These small ideas are of variable importance, depending on many factors, including the length of your presentation, the audience and when they “buy”.
Take one of the big ideas. Put it at the top of a slide. Put the supporting ideas beneath it. This menu slide will make your presentations more powerful and effective. With a button beside each supporting idea, you can branch at will to a slide (or series of slides) that supports that idea. At the end of each branch, return to the menu slide. Menu slides increase your effectiveness in many ways. Here are a few of the ways that menu slides can increase your effectiveness.
1) Repetition aids retention.
The audience sees the menu slide several times. We are lucky if
the audience retains 10% of what we present. However, by using menu
slides, we can affect what parts they do remember. At the end of
every branch, you return to the menu slide, so the audience sees the
main and supporting points several times. They will more clearly see
the connections between the points than if they were presented
linearly. The result is that the audience will remember the more of
the points. Since the information is clearer, the result is better
retention.
2) Freedom to customize
With menu slides, you have great control over your information.
You can customize how much or how little you use as you present. You
do not have to make all the branches from the menu slide. You can
have supporting slides and use them only as necessary. If the buttons
are not obvious, you can skip branches without quickly paging forward
in front of your audience. If you put a button on all slides of the
supporting branch that returns to the menu, you have even more
control.
3) Better thinking during design
A final advantage to menu slides is the way the encourage you to
look at information when you design and present. Instead of trying to
force a story, you can focus on what you want to say -- main points
and supporting points. You can present them in the most appropriate
order for a particular audience. This new method of design and
presentation means you will be more clear, more direct and will say
what you want to say. In short, you will be more effective.
Two Hints:
1. Use hidden buttons when appropriate. If you have supporting data or answers to questions that may or may not arise, use “hidden” buttons. If you don’t use an obvious button, the audience will wonder why. A button does not have to look like a button to branch in most programs. Words, graphics, even certain spots on the screen can be buttons.
2. Avoid layers of menus. Don’t click on the button of one menu slide and go to another menu slide. This layering will negate the advantages of repetition and reinforcement of information. Try to deal with the information on one menu slide, then go to another. Occasionally, you may use a table of contents type menu slide at the beginning of a talk which branches to other menu slides. However, use this technique sparingly. Consider the information and it’s flow from the point of view of your audience who has never seen this information before.
The Rule of 4
Think about your audience -- their knowledge and interests. This is essential for good design. Remember, you have spent many hours working with this information. What is obvious and clear to you may not be to someone seeing the information for the first time. People tend to focus on information for very very brief periods (even when someone as fascinating as you is delivering the material). Knowing that we retain only a part of what we focus on. I aim toward 10% retention. Effective electronic presentations help do two things: 1) Keep the audience awake and 2) Impact which 10% they remember.
Good presentations support and reinforce what the speaker is saying. They do not repeat it. The information on slides should be main points which bring the audience members back on track when they are jolted awake or come into focus. These points should be short -- 4 or 5 words at maximum. Full sentences are hard to read, unlikely to be remembered and provide a huge temptation for nervous speakers to commit the ultimate act of audience sedation ... reading from the slide.
We tend to look at a screen as a single graphic object, not as individual words as we do on paper. Because of this, it is essential that you keep both menu slides and supporting slides simple in design and easy to read from a distance. Keep the main point and the supporting points short and few. Focus on main ideas, not complete sentences. If possible, bring in the points one at a time and fade the points to a lighter color once they have been covered in order to focus the attention on the current point.
The rule of 4 is: 4 points per slide and 4 (or 5) words per point.
Think About the “So What?”
A great tool to break the story telling trap and to focus attention on the audience during design is to use ‘so what?”. Your presentation -- So what? What is the point? What should the audience leave knowing? Each slide -- So what? What do you want the audience to remember from each slide? The “so what?” for each slide should be the title/main point. Keep boiling down to the essential. The flowery and subtle have no place on a slide. Slides support a presenter. They do not replace a presenter. The presenter adds the humor, digressions, passion -- in short, the eloquence. The slides are just the facts. The slides are there as a continuous reminder of the “so what?”.
Focus on the “so what?” will make your presentations more concise, more effective and more remembered by the audience.
Beware the WoW factor
Most presentation programs are full of special effects. They are sold by showing all the cool effects provided. Unfortunately, most first time builders try to use every effect available. Words and pictures come flying in from all directions. Slides shake, shimmy and spin in and out. Any movement is accompanied by other-worldly sounds or stirring sounds of great symphonies. Everything is awash is a riot of color and motion. In a large screen presentation, people have to leave because of motion sickness.
This is bad design. Don’t do it.
You have probably been to presentations full of sound and fury. The audience leaves saying “WoW! That was great!” Until someone asks, “What was it about?” and no one seems to know. This is the WOW factor. (If you like acronyms -think of WoW as Wonders withOut Wisdom). Use effects to focus attention. Use them sparingly.
A perfect example is slide transitions. Most people use them. Why? Usually, when you have finished one slide, you have finished that information. The audience is ready for the next piece of information. Hopefully, they are eagerly awaiting it. A transition between slides is worse than useless -- it breaks the flow of information -- it breaks the flow, catches attention, and diverts the attention from you to nothing. You want to get to the new information quickly, not waste that time on swirls and giggles.
Design is a Process
We as presenters have powerful new tools in our hands. However, to use them effectively takes time. It takes longer to build interactive presentations. It also takes longer to design them. The most important way you can improve your presentations is to take time up front, to design while considering interaction, menu screens and the “So What?” principle. Look at design as a process. You do some design, then build the presentation, then come back and improve the design, then present, then improve the design again, based on input from audience, co-workers and your own sense of its utility. It is easy and cheap to improve a presentation. Take advantage of this feature.
One final hint. Take the time before the presentation to do two things. First, run through the presentation with the slides. This way you will know where the branching is, where the buttons are, what your options are and how the screens flow. You don’t want to hunt through slides or study them while presenting. Secondly, test the presentation on the actual hardware you will be using for the presentation before the presentation starts. Many a nightmare can be avoided with a few minutes of tinkering, but you don’t have time for embarrassing tinkering when all eyes are on you.
Summary
Presenters can express themselves in idea clusters, focusing their presentations and their audience’s attention on what is important. No longer do we need to force our information into a linear format. Taking advantage of interaction will allow presenters to be more effective and clear and help audiences retain more. This power is ours as long as we take the time to design for interactivity, avoid the WoW factor, and keep in mind the all important question: So What?
(c) Copyright 1997 Steven C. Schatz 410 Peru San Francisco 415-334-1493 schatz@earthlink.net